Chicago Tribune, IL
03-13-07
FDA seeks safety checks for fruits, veggies
Critics call voluntary testing `meaningless'
By John Schmeltzer
Tribune staff reporter
With U.S. consumption of lettuce and spinach declining in the wake of several
serious food-poisoning episodes, government regulators Monday called on
produce processors to install monitoring systems to detect food-borne
contaminants.
But the Food and Drug Administration said it would not impose mandatory
testing, at least for now, despite acknowledging that the system for monitoring
fresh fruit and vegetable safety long has been problematic.
The voluntary testing plan was immediately excoriated by a watchdog group as
"meaningless," while a major industry trade association said its members would
comply but also pushed for further regulation.
Both the government and producers are feeling pressure to boost confidence in
the nation's food supply after a rash of high-profile contamination incidents in
recent years. In September, the FDA issued a nationwide recall of fresh spinach
due to an E. coli outbreak that killed three people and sickened 182.
"The outbreaks indicate that more needs to be done to limit the illnesses," said
Nega Beru, director of the Office of Food Safety.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 76
million cases of food-borne illnesses are reported each year in the U.S. The
agency estimates that about 325,000 people are hospitalized and about 5,000
die each year.
Ensuring the safety of the nation's fresh fruit and vegetable supply has become
especially critical because of government efforts to increase consumption of
those foods to reduce obesity rates. The CDC this month, in cooperation with
food companies, is to launch a new campaign aimed at promoting the
consumption of five servings of fruits or vegetables per day.
But industry officials say that sales of lettuce and spinach are down 20 percent in
the wake of several E. coli outbreaks last fall. Besides the spinach incident,
contaminants were traced in separate outbreaks to 90 Taco Bell outlets in
Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and Long Island, N.Y., as well as several
Taco John restaurants in Iowa and southern Minnesota.
According to a survey by the Food Policy Institute at Rutgers University, about 60
percent of those surveyed said they have not resumed eating spinach since
September's recall.
While researchers for the CDC had traced the spinach poisonings to farms in
California's Salinas Valley, the FDA said it would not impose regulations on
growers. Instead, it wants to focus on processors that package and distribute the
produce.
An FDA official indicated the agency supported a voluntary monitoring program
because it would be quicker to enact than mandating cooperation.
"We think we can get compliance in shorter order, but we haven't ruled out
rulemaking," said Dr. David Acheson, director of the FDA's Office of Food
Defense, Communication and Emergency Response, noting that the rulemaking
process requires lengthy hearings.
The labs would follow a system in place for meat, poultry and seafood that
requires monitoring for contaminants at multiple points along the production
process, such as at cooling, packaging and metal detection, rather than just spot-
checking at the end.
The system apparently has been successful in reducing the outbreaks in beef but
less successful in seafood and poultry outbreaks, according to records
maintained by the CDC.
Thomas Stenzel, president and chief executive of the United Fresh Produce
Association, which represents about half of the nation's produce industry,
supports the new guidelines.
"We pledge our commitment to seeing these guidelines implemented in every
produce-processing operation," he said at a hearing before the agriculture
subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee in Madison, Wis.
Stenzel called on the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop
nationwide mandatory regulations that would apply not only to processors but
also to growers.
"We must be able ... to reassure the public that, together, we have done
everything necessary," he said.
The hearing, conducted by Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), was held in Madison
because the spinach contamination was discovered by the Wisconsin Division of
Public Health.
Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director of the Center for Science in the
Public Interest, blistered the recommendations, saying at the hearing they "are
too little too late to prevent the very real problems we are facing." She noted that
the E. coli outbreak in spinach had as many deaths associated with it as the Jack
in the Box E. coli outbreak in 1992.
"Not only are these guidelines meaningless domestically, they are unenforceable
internationally," Smith DeWaal said.
According to the FDA, about one-third of the nation's supply of fresh fruits and
vegetables are imported, mainly from Mexico.
Dennis Olson, a professor at Iowa State University who has suggested that
contamination problems in leafy vegetables could be eliminated if they were
irradiated, said the FDA would be unable to police a mandatory program.
"They don't have enough inspectors," he said.
Olson said the industry is caught between a rock and a hard place. Only about
half of the nation's processors have some sort of inspection program in place,
according to the FDA.
"Implementing these guidelines is going to have some costs, and, therefore,
there is no incentive to comply, yet they want to keep their businesses going. So
there are some conflicting incentives," he said.
Joe Schwieterman, a public-policy specialist at DePaul University and the head
of the university's Chaddick Institute, said there is bound to be an increase in
cost for the consumer.
"The costs of these regulations always trickle down to the consumer," he said. "
Higher costs and reduced supply are the likely outcomes. There is a risk that
one-size-fits-all regulations will, in the end, accomplish little."