The Deepwater Horizon oil spill continues to plague the Gulf Coast, dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil each day, devastating wildlife and crippling many aspects of the region’s economy.  Among the many economic and environmental concerns posed by the spill is the impact the oil could have on our food. 

Roughly 40 percent of the seafood harvested in the United States comes from the Gulf region.  And with oil leaking at an alarming rate, public health officials are growing increasingly concerned with the spill’s potential impact on food safety.

Even though Easter has been over for a couple of weeks, you may still be secretly snacking on delectable holiday remnants. And some of you may also be feeling the post-holiday food blues. Are you wondering if one too many chocolate bunnies are behind that nasty tummy ache?  Afraid those sugar-coated marshmallow chicks have completely rotted out your teeth?

Here’s some news for you: leftover Easter candy isn’t the only thing that can make you sick this time of year. Those pretty bright eggs have the potential to be a major menace if they’re hidden behind throw pillows instead of stored in a refrigerator. That’s right, improper egg handling and storage is a leading cause of Salmonella. While it may be difficult to resist the temptation to chow down on old jelly beans, there are things you can do to make sure all those Easter dishes, especially the ones NOT made out of candy, don’t make you sick.

A recent report published by the Produce Safety Project estimates that foodborne illnesses costs $152 billion annually in medical expenses and workplace losses. Foodborne illness from contaminated produce is the biggest culprit, costing more than $1,950 for each reported case. And when more than 19 million produce-related foodborne illness cases are reported each year, that adds up to a lot of dough. $39 billion to be exact.

Food safety advocates hope to use this data to motivate Congress to pass the Food Safety Enhancement Act, legislation that will increase the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s authority to make sure our dinners are safe to eat. Last July, the bill passed in the House of Representatives, and step two is the Senate’s seal of approval. The bill has kind of been sitting on the back burner while the Senate debates health care reform, but legislators are hoping to vote on it this spring…fingers crossed.

In the meantime, there are things we can do to not only minimize the spread of bacteria and viruses that can cause foodborne illness, but the costs associated with these illnesses as well. The FDA has some great tips on purchasing, storing and preparing fresh produce to prevent the spread of foodborne illnesses.

When you’re at the store, try to avoid purchasing damaged or bruised products. Fresh cut items, like bagged mixed greens or sliced fruits, should either be surrounded by ice, or in a refrigerated case at the store. Don’t forget to bag fruits and veggie separate from meat, poultry and fish. This can reduce the risk of cross contamination!

Make sure to store you fresh fruits and veggies in temperatures below 40 degrees – especially if you bought them pre-cut or pre-sliced. When you’re ready to eat, cut away any bruised or damaged area, and always remember to thoroughly wash AND dry your food to minimize the number of bacteria and viruses that may be lurking on your lettuce. Sometimes produce is packaged with labels that say “pre-washed.”  It’s not mandatory to wash these items, but an extra rinse couldn’t hurt.

And as always, make sure you use clean utensils and cutting boards when you’re chopping up things like carrots and chicken. The two may taste great in a soup, but it’s never a good idea to use the same cutting boards or utensils when you’re prepping the ingredients.

So keep your fingers crossed and your celery clean. Proper produce handling can not only save lives, but big bucks as well!

For more information and tips on preventing the spread of foodborne illnesses, check out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agricutlure’s Food Safety Inspection Service’s Websites!

Questions about food safety legislation?  Be sure to check out this podcast with Dr. Ashley Shelton, of the American Veterinary Medical Association and learn what Congress has been doing to keep our food safe.

Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released results from a 2008 Health and Diet survey indicating that a majority of consumers do, in fact, read food labels because they are beginning to get a better understanding the role proper nutrition plays in lowering the risk of chronic diseases. According to the survey, more consumers “often read labels to determine the amount of calories, salts, vitamins or fat contained in the food products they are buying.” Choosing healthy, safe food is always music to our ears!

But the labels on food packaging can tell us more than just the nutritional content. There is another teensy little label that has a pretty big impact on food safety, especially when it comes to meat and poultry products – the expiration date.

One might think the meaning of an expiration label is self-explanatory, but this is not always the case. Actually, expiration labels are often called “dating labels” – but don’t confuse these with dinner and a movie dates. These labels are used to indicate how long your food should stay fresh.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), by reading so-called dating labels, we can learn more than the date that the meat goes bad. For example, if you own a grocery store, these labels help you and your employees determine how long to keep products like meat, eggs and cheese available for sale. And before adding a gallon of milk to their carts, shoppers can look to dating labels to see how long the milk will taste its best.

But while these labels are helpful when you’re trying to determine how long you should keep a porterhouse, it’s really important to remember these dates don’t guarantee the food is safe.

O.K. class, time for another lesson on who does what in the never-ending quest to keep your food safe. We all can agree the Food and Drug Administration is one big, busy bee, can’t we? After all, regulating nearly 80 percent of our nation’s food supply is a pretty significant job. But the FDA can’t do all of this alone – so the task of protecting our dinners is a team effort. Among those who are part of the complex work of keeping our food safe are more than 3,000 state and local health agencies that work with the FDA to ensure the safety of products like milk, shellfish and veggies.

Where did these agencies come from, you ask? Well, the  authorized three cooperative programs, comprised of federal, state and local regulatory agencies, to monitor the safety of our shellfish, milk and retail foods. State and local governments regulate processing plants, farms and restaurants by inspecting facilities, issuing licenses and permits, and enforcing food safety and public health laws.

If regulation and inspection are done on local level, then what does this have to do with the FDA? Glad you asked! The FDA provides specialists with expertise in shellfish, milk and retail foods to guide state and local officials in policy implementation and inspections. These specialists audit state and local officials’ inspections of all aspects of food processing and distribution, from dairy plants to restaurants and supermarkets, to make sure these facilities meet sanitation requirements. Additionally, the agency trains state officials on how to use FDA guidelines in order to establish uniform standards for state and local food regulatory agencies.

But that’s not the only role the FDA plays in relation to these cooperative programs. The agency’s food safety experts actually develop the programs and policies state and local officials use to monitor facilities in their area. The FDA’s specialists develop sample guidelines addressing foodborne illness prevention that can be used by states and municipalities when drafting their own regulations. Additionally, these specialists meet with members of local governments to advocate for the adoption of new FDA policies.

Not only do these cooperative programs keep our food safe during the inspection and distribution processes, they also are instrumental in ensuring the safety of our food during large scale events like natural disasters. Debris and flooding from a hurricane, for example, can facilitate the growth of bacteria, compromising the safety of milk and other dairy products. Dairy processing plants are often significantly damaged during floods and hurricanes, causing milk to become contaminated. FDA specialists work with state and local public health authorities to ensure our food is safe by inspecting damaged facilities as they rebuild and restart production.

With federal, state and local public health authorities working together to keep each other up to date on food protection, we can feel pretty good about what’s on our plates. Now that’s teamwork!

And the people have spoken! Well, sort of.

Recently, our federal government took a major step forward by approving the Obama Administration’s food safety recommendations.  The House of Representatives passed H.R. 2749, also known as the “Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.” 

The Food Safety Enhancement Act significantly increases the authority the Food and Drug Administration to ensure the safety of our food, as well as set regulations for facilities and importers. 

Under this legislation, food facilities are required to conduct a hazard analysis, implement preventative measures and provide a plan in the event of an outbreak.  The Secretary of Health and Human Services (the department that houses the FDA) is given the authority to create a verification program for imported foods and quarantine food in specific geographic areas in the United States in the event of an outbreak.

Additionally, the bill gives the FDA the authority to recall of contaminated food.  Previously, the FDA only had the authority to recommend the recall of a product, but it was up to the manufacturers and distributors to take action.

The FDA is required to provide science-based standards to minimize the hazards from contaminants, create an accreditation program for laboratories to test imported and exported food and establish a national traceback system.  The FDA also has the authority to assess fees related to facility reinspection or recall – a nice little incentive for manufacturers to keep facilities up to date.  Finally, every six to 12 months the agency is required to conduct inspections at high-risk facilities, like processing plants that handle products that spoil easily or facilities with a history of food safety problems.  If an inspection is delayed or refused by any facility, the food is considered to be contaminated, even if it safe to eat. 

It’s important to remember that this legislation only applies to the FDA, and these specific standards don’t apply to meat and poultry, since these products are inspected by the USDA.  But the FDA is responsible for regulating more than 80% of the food we eat, and USDA products have been regulated under tighter standards for a long time.

What’s next for H.R. 2749?  It becomes the supreme law of the land, right?  Not quite.  The bill still needs to pass the Senate, which mostly likely will not hear the issue until this fall.  Stay tuned.  We’ll keep you posted.

Looks like our nation’s food safety system could get a much needed makeover.

The Obama Administration recently announced a plan to beef up federal efforts in reducing Salmonella and E. Coli contamination in our food supply.   In March, President Obama created a Food Safety Working Group to discuss ways of addressing foodborne outbreaks, focusing on proactive approaches to prevent the spread of disease.

The Food Safety Working Group provided recommendations in three specific areas of our food safety system that are in need of some attention.

First, the working group recommended focusing on preventing the spread of Salmonella contamination, specifically in eggs and poultry.  According to the CDC, eggs are one of the leading causes of Salmonella outbreaks each year.  But for years the government was unable to finalize any rules on egg safety.  We have one now.  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a final rule to control the contamination of eggs during production and transportation.  Egg producers are required to implement and comply with Salmonella prevention standards which include refrigeration requirements, pest and rodent control programs, facility sanitation requirements and recordkeeping requirements including documentation that the facility has complied with Salmonella prevention measures.   Additionally, the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) is in the process of developing new standards to reduce Salmonella in turkey and poultry, and hopes to have 90% of poultry establishments in compliance by the end of 2010.

Second, the working group discussed the importance of a national traceback and response system to help identify the source of an outbreak quickly and efficiently.  This includes developing a method to locate the origins of food outbreaks, creating a command center linking federal agencies with state and local governments to effectively communicate with one another during an outbreak, and working with state and local agencies to update their emergency and investigation procedures in the event of an outbreak.

Finally, the working group suggested ways to improve the organization of federal food safety responsibilities by creating a new position - the Deputy Commissioner of Foods.  This role will oversee the FDA’s food safety efforts and work with other entities, including the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), to develop a stronger food safety system.  Establishing this position creates responsibility and accountability in overseeing our food safety system as well as providing consumers with a clear authority figure to effectively enforce food safety regulations.

Many consumer, manufacturer and public health organizations are on board with this overhaul.  Consumer advocacy groups, like the Grocery Manufacturers of America and Consumer’s Union, agree that these recommendations are large steps to prioritizing the prevention of contamination in our food supply.

While these recommendations are short-term steps to finding a long-term solution, they are still steps in the right direction.  By making outbreak prevention a priority, we can improve the safety of food around the globe.  But implementing these new standards will require the time, effort and manpower of many individuals, including additional food supply veterinarians to inspect our food and enforce the standards.

And there is already a critically short supply.

Check out the video below to see what organizations, like the American Veterinary Medical Association, have to say on the role veterinarians will have in the Obama Administration’s new and improved food safety system.

F-D-A. Three little letters that play a big role in food safety. The Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition regulates nearly $470 billion in domestic and imported food through facility inspection, sample analysis, laboratory research and monitoring imported goods. But recently, USA Today reported that this agency, which touches so many aspects of our lives, failed to meet their food safety inspection goals.

The FDA contracts about half of their inspections to state authorities, and in turn, aims to audit 7% of those inspections to ensure the procedures the states use are part of the agency’s uniformed standards. But in 2007-2008, the FDA was unable to reach their audit goal of seven percent. In that year, the agency’s goal was to conduct audits in 39 states, but fell short in at least 17 of those states, including five that were not audited at all. And while 7% may sound like small potatoes, it’s a lot more audits than you think. Texas, for example, had 685 facilities scheduled for inspection in 2008. The FDA’s goal was to audit 48 of those inspections. And that is just one state. (By the way, it’s important to remember that in these audits, the FDA is checking the accuracy and thoroughness of inspections, not performing the inspection on the facility.)

The FDA says many of these audits were missed because of scheduling challenges and poor follow-up. Additionally, major foodborne illness outbreaks consumed FDA and state staffers’ time and resources. Investigating and controlling these outbreaks is always a priority, and audits generally get put on the back burner.

But are less audits occurring because of an increase in outbreaks or are outbreaks occurring because facilities are being audited less frequently? Maybe it’s a little bit of both.

This serves as a good reminder that the FDA isn’t just responsible for inspecting food processing plants. This agency works to protect public health by monitoring the safety of our food and our pets’ food, human and veterinary medicine, cosmetics and medical devices, like automatic external defibrillator machines, just to name a few of its responsibilities (Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act). If you add keeping track of our nation’s blood supply and monitoring radiation levels of our electronic devices to those responsibilities, the FDA has a pretty full plate.

Many food safety experts agree that the FDA isn’t doing a bad job of juggling and balancing so many areas of concern. The agency is just underfunded and lacks the resources to balance all these responsibilities, they say. New food safety regulation could be a solution, but is adding more really the answer? If the FDA doesn’t have enough resources to implement and enforce current regulations, how can they be expected to implement and enforce additional ones? In fact, many food safety experts and organizations believe federal, state and local food regulatory agencies should work closely to effectively enforce current food safety regulations, instead of simply adding new ones.

But whether more legislation and regulations, or additional funding and resources are the answer, one thing is certain, our current food safety system needs reform. Food safety is a pretty big job, and it’s important for all of us to have enough trained experts at all levels of the food safety chain, from federal to local, to maintain our high quality food safety standards.

With so much recent debate over how the federal government should improve food safety, we decided it was time to get some straight talk from an expert. Our latest Chew on This podcast has the answers and info you've been looking for on what the federal government is doing to keep our food safe.

Recent food safety outbreaks and recalls have caused many to question the efficiency and effectiveness of our federal food safety system. In this new podcast, Dr. Ron DeHaven, Chief Executive Officer of the AVMA, explains which federal agencies work to keep our food safe and discusses what the government can do to improve food safety.

Listen now.

Alright, class, time for another lesson in food safety and the federal government. We all know that the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is responsible for ensuring the safety of our meat, poultry and eggs, and that other sections within the USDA are also hard at work protecting some other food sources. And we also know that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) checks on our food too: veggies, dairy, seafood and processed products. But here’s a question to test your food safety knowledge: do you know how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fits into this equation?

The CDC is a public health agency that works to equip humans with the necessary tools to protect their health. They investigate all types of diseases and work on many different types of disease prevention and control, including foodborne diseases, like salmonella, and diseases that aren’t transmitted through our food, like influenza. While the CDC doesn’t regulate our food supply, it does work closely with the USDA and the FDA to interpret data collected from state and local public health authorities and it investigates foodborne related outbreaks.

Like the name implies, foodborne diseases are transmitted through the consumption of contaminated food. Stomach Flu or noroviruses, for example, are spread person to person. In fact, humans are the sole reservoir for noroviruses, and noroviruses cause the vast majority of foodborne illnesses.

Additionally, hygiene and food preparation play an important role in spreading disease. People play an unintended yet significant role in the transmission of foodborne diseases through poor hygiene, such as not washing their hands properly. Improper food storage and preparation, such as not cooking meat at a high enough temperature, also contribute to foodborne illness.

Back to the CDC… The CDC’s Emerging Infections Program (EIP) developed the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) in 1995 as an important component of its foodborne disease initiative. FoodNet collaborates with the USDA, FDA and ten EIP sites across the United States to provide information that helps public officials better understand and respond to foodborne illness outbreaks.

Generally, as the result of a physician requesting lab tests on a patient, the discovery of a foodborne disease is reported by the laboratory to the state health department. After extensive investigation by the local authorities, suspected outbreaks are reported to the CDC. Because an intricate chain of events needs to occur before the CDC is notified, and because most people don’t visit a doctor for these types of mild illnesses, very few are actually reported to the CDC.

FoodNet, on the other hand, provides a quicker way for foodborne outbreaks to be detected. Reports of outbreaks are continuously being checked by public officials, instead of waiting for labs to report incidents and outbreaks. Public officials frequently contact the laboratories to inquire about new cases of foodborne illness and report them to the CDC, so they can closely monitor these events and provide more accurate estimates of the extent and effect of these outbreaks.