Food safety and infectious disease experts on both continents are cautioning lawmakers, consumers, and industry that a similar scenario could unfold anywhere.

“Could this happen here? You bet,” said Food Politics author and New York University professor Marion Nestle, on her Web site Food Politics Monday.

David Acheson, former associate commissioner of foods at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, now a consultant to the food industry, agrees. He says the devastation in Europe “serves as a strong reminder to those of us in the United States that we are always one step away from a major food safety crisis.”

“As we look on from the outside at the outbreak in the European Union (EU), it is natural to wonder if this could happen in the United States,” Acheson wrote in a blog post for Leavitt Partners, a consulting firm founded by Mike Leavitt, who served as Secretary of Health and Human Services under the Bush administration. “I have very little doubt that it could, and so we should not lose this opportunity to learn more lessons about food safety.”

“The most important lesson is to focus on building systems that prevent such a situation occurring here in the U.S,” explains Acheson. He believes broad mitigation strategies to prevent all forms of E. coli from contaminating food products are the most critical.

“One one has to look for a multifaceted approach that includes controls throughout the supply chain from farms, during processing (of meat, fresh produce or other higher risk items like raw milk) and during handling of food at home,” he adds.

Both Acheson and Nestle stressed budgetary concerns as Food and Drug Administration (FDA) moves to implement the most ambitious update to the food regulatory system since the early 20th century.

“If ever there was a time to give the FDA more resources, now is it,” added Nestle in her post, which was also published on The Atlantic online. “The FDA now has the authority to impose standard food safety procedures on food producers and to require safety measures for the foods we import. But Congress wants to cut the agency’s budget, and badly.”

The House Appropriations Committee recently advanced an appropriations bill that would give the agency $87 million less food safety in Fiscal Year 2012 than FY 2011.

“In the current climate of reduced federal funding, it should be made very clear to Congress that our food safety system in the US cannot afford to be undermined through lack of resources,” said Acheson.  “A request to Congress is not to cut funding, but rather to ensure efficient use of current and future much needed funding.”

A version of this story first appeared on Food Safety News

For most of us working in food policy, it’s hard to remember a time when food outbreaks of bugs like E. coli didn’t happen pretty much weekly. But reading the new book Poisoned by Jeff Benedict made me realize that bacteria-contaminated hamburgers are a relatively recent phenomenon; a striking reminder of how our food system has gone very, very wrong.

Given that the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak happened back in 1993, it seems odd that no one has written a book about it before. But it’s just as well, because Benedict’s style is tailor made to the task. His detailed and heart-wrenching story-telling makes the 18-year wait well worthwhile.

Each chapter tells the tale from the varying perspectives of several key players: From the parents of the victims, to the corporate executives, to the lawyers on both sides of the inevitable spate of lawsuits. But instead of relying on the past tense to tell their respective stories, Benedict chooses a novel-like style, with events unfolding in “real time.”

Within just a few pages, the reader is swiftly taken from the bedside of nine-year-old Brianne Kiner suffering from a bacteria-induced coma, to the office of Jack in the Box CEO Robert Nugent, wondering if the company would survive this PR disaster, to the laboratory of Dr. John Kobayashi, epidemiologist in the Washington State Health Department, where test results confirmed the source of the deadly contamination and how he decides to go public to prevent more victims.

The result is a fast-paced, incredibly readable, even if at times a tad overly dramatized, story. (Although, it is hard to overstate tragedy when it comes to the death of children.)

The author keeps coming back to one key player’s story: Personal injury attorney Bill Marler, a name familiar to anyone who keeps up on food safety. But in 1993, Marler, like most other Americans, never even heard of E. coli. When the news hit that contaminated fast food burgers were causing scores of admissions to Seattle hospitals, Marler’s career path was set into motion.

Since then, Marler Clark (“The Food Safety Law Firm”) has represented thousands of victims of foodborne illness outbreaks. But far more than a plaintiff’s firm, Marler and his colleagues also advocate for better food safety laws. (For example, last year Marler begged Congress to “Put a trial lawyer out of business” by increasing FDA’s authority and scope, was finally did happen.)

Two aspects of this disaster stood out as particularly startling from a food policy perspective. At least a year prior to the outbreak, Washington State had issued new regulations requiring restaurants to cook its hamburgers to a higher temperature than was required by federal law. But somehow that detail was missed by someone at Jack in the Box. (The quality control executive who blamed himself for not knowing about the new rule actually comes off as sympathetic, as do other employees.)

The other startling fact was that the federal government (USDA and CDC) had known for at least 10 years prior to this case that E. coli could be transmitted through hamburgers. Two outbreaks linked to “undercooked meat” from “the same fast-food restaurant chain” causing multiple illnesses were reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1983, and yet the public was unaware of this incident (which occurred in 1982). That chain was McDonald’s. While it’s obvious why the company didn’t want this information to be made public, executives apparently didn’t even bother to share it within their own industry. Jack in the Box’s CEO lamented that had he known, his company might have taken additional precautions.

To its credit, Jack in the Box subsequently hired a meat safety specialist to implement stepped-up “quality assurance” measures. Also, the company did not put up much of a fight in court. To the contrary, Jack in the Box (through its insurers) ultimately paid out record-breaking settlement amounts, thanks in large part to some very gutsy negotiating by Marler.

Another aspect of the book that was especially revealing was the inside story at Jack in the Box. You might expect the executives to be painted as the bad guys, but that’s hardly the case. These are just ordinary business men caught up in an awful mess, doing their best to figure out what went wrong.

As for who was to blame for the outbreak in the first place? While it was traced to a beef supplier to Jack in the Box, those details are not entirely clear and this was the one area where the book was lacking. We now know that such outbreaks are due mainly to factory-farms that create unsanitary conditions for animals, spurred by widespread distribution and lack of oversight.

But the heart and soul of the book lies with the victims and their families. When the damage was done, four children were killed and hundreds more sickened. No amount of settlement money could compensate for those losses and the author could only tell a small fraction of their actual suffering.

While the book’s subtitle (“The True Story of the Deadly E. coli Outbreak That Changed the Way Americans Eat”) may be overly optimistic, Poisoned is an extremely important account of a heart-breaking story; one that unfortunately continues to be repeated all too often.

Originally published on Appetite For Profit

Food Safety News recently caught up with Schlosser while he was in Washington, DC meeting with lawmakers about food safety and keynoting Consumers Union’s Activist Summit.

Q: How did your meetings with lawmakers go?

A: I’m trying to just light a fire about the FDA modernization bill. The people I met with felt very strongly about it and want it to pass. I think it’s absolutely urgent, it will be a tragic missed opportunity if they don’t pass it. I see why there are so many other issues–like saving the economy from collapse–that they’ve had to deal with, but this one seems like a no brainer. It’s not a hot button political issue like abortion or gun control where there are passionate divisions and people on each side.

There’s really nobody saying “I want MRSA in my pork” or “I want E.coli in my ground beef.”

Q: Right, but with of all these issues competing for the Senate’s time–health care, financial regulatory reform–it seems difficult to get food issues high enough on the list to get them on the schedule…

A: It’s interesting. I’m so encouraged by what I find on college campuses and among your generation. This is a really vital social movement. The kind interest, the passion for the subject, and the willingness to try do something about it is encouraging. I feel like politicians are out of touch with that fact. There is percolating this big movement now, which is in a lot of ways analogous to what the environmental movement was in the late 1960s, early 70s. It hasn’t quite hit the critical mass, but it’s going to.

I think it’s tragic if these people in Washington are behind the curve, especially when the cost of being behind the curve is so high. If we get a major outbreak and they can’t trace it, they can’t recall it, and they’re not testing for it, I mean…

They’re finding MRSA in the streams in North Carolina down stream from a hog operation. It’s really unusual to find this sort of staph surviving in water that way. This is where people are fishing, this is where people could conceivably be going into the water. Imagine if there was a factory spewing this really dark cloud that smelled terrible and killed you–we wouldn’t allow it at all. Because this is invisible it’s much more difficult to make the direct connection, but it’s pollution in the same way. It’s a toxic substance coming from a factory sickening people downstream. That’s really the basis for the environmental movement 40 years ago. It’s trying to help people make those connections.

Q: In Fast Food Nation, you write extensively about meat safety, what kinds of things would you like to see the USDA do on the food safety front?

A: One of the people I met with yesterday, who I thought was terrific, was Senator Gillibrand. It’s kind of amazing that she even has to propose legislation to make the non-O157s an adulterant considering the USDA could just do it in an instant. Their argument that they need the right test is absurd. The headquarters of Earthbound Farms is not far from where I live, Earthbound has been testing for non-O157s for four years. It’s not a perfect system but probably as good as exists.

There is no question that the passage of the FDA bill would greatly put pressure on the USDA to have similar sorts of practices in place. There should be performance testing, there should be a greater ability to trace the meat, there should be mandatory recall, and serious criminal type penalties for knowingly shipping contaminated product.

From what I’ve read of the Peanut Corporation of America case…that’s just outrageous, to knowingly ship contaminated peanut butter that’s going to be consumed by children. Why does this happen? Right, the economic system favors dishonesty and favors unethical behavior. The companies that want to do things the right way and pay a little extra for food safety–because the consumer can’t tell the difference, visually, between what’s wholesome and what’s tainted, there’s a real incentive to cheat. You just have to look to China to see what human beings are willing to do for money. Tainted baby formula is just unbelievable.

Originally posted on Food Safety News

“The story we learned about over the weekend is unacceptable and tragic. We all know we can and should do more to protect the safety of the American people and the story in this weekend’s paper will continue to spur our efforts to reduce the incidence of E. coli O157:H7. Over the last eight months since President Obama took office, USDA has been aggressive in its efforts to improve food safety, and has been an active partner in establishing and contributing to President Obama’s Food Safety Working Group.

Bah, humbug. What’s your plan, Tom?

• Launched an initiative to cut down E. Coli contamination (including in particular contamination from E. Coli O157:H7) and as part of that initiative, stepped-up meat facility inspections involving greater use of sampling to monitor the products going into ground beef.
• Appointed a chief medical officer within USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service to reaffirm its role as a public health agency.
• Issued draft guidelines for industry to further reduce the risk of O157 contamination.
• Started testing additional components of ground beef, including bench trim, and issuing new instructions to our employees asking that they verify that plants follow sanitary practices in processing beef carcasses.
• Designed the Public Health Information System (PHIS) in response to lessons learned in past outbreaks.

“USDA is also looking at ways to enhance traceback methods and will initiate a rulemaking in the near future to require all grinders, including establishments and retail stores, to keep accurate records of the sources of each lot of ground beef.”

Double “Bah, humbug.” As I said on Twitter just now, this is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic sort of stuff. As long as the industry is able to set the terms of its own regulations and do things like maintain bizarro “trade secrets” protections on key elements of our food safety system (not to mention base their business on corn rather than grass), real reform is impossible. Back to the drawing board, Tom.

h/t Bill Marler. Originally published on Beyond Green

It really does seem like Tom Vilsack can’t find anyone to run the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. You wouldn’t think it would be that hard. There must be dozens of scientists and food safety experts who fit the bill. But this, of course, is the USDA we’re talking about — the poster child for regulatory capture, the phenomenon whereby a regulator acts almost entirely in the interests of its target industry rather than in the interests of the public.

As a result, the head of the FSIS is typically a scientist or doctor with, if not direct ties to the food industry, then at least a career that puts him or her firmly in the industrial food mainstream. For example, the last two heads of FSIS have been Elsa Murano, a Texas A&M scientist who is now that institution’s president and Richard Raymond who, before heading FSIS, was Nebraska’s Chief Medical Officer and a senior official in its Health and Human Services department. While competent officials, these folks are not crusading reformers, which is just the way the food industry likes it.

Indeed, the word is from within the USDA that, in the wake of the Swine Flu epidemic, USDA Chief Tom Vilsack wants to throw a bone to the livestock industry in particular with the FSIS appointment. Presumably, he’s gotten a shortlist from Big Meat and has been working his way down it. The problem here isn’t that they can’t find a qualified candidate. The problem is that it appears the industry has embraced a particular brand of food safety, with irradiation and chemical treatment of processed meat at its core. The three candidates mentioned for the post so far, Michael Osterholm, Michael Taylor (though it’s unclear if he was really up for the job) and Mike Doyle (so many Mikes!) are all champions of what Marion Nestle likes to call “late-stage techno-fixes.” Or, as Obamafoodorama puts it, “Zap the crap!” But even worse, they are extremely closely tied to the industries they are meant to regulate — each of the three has at some point performed work for a regulated company or an industry group.

As a result, they have all provoked strong responses from consumer and sustainable food advocates which appear to have successfully punctured every trial balloon Vilsack has floated. In the past, it’s hard to imagine that such protests would have gotten very far at the USDA, so I think you have to look at the empty chair at FSIS as a weird sort of victory. With the outcry over food safety in the media and new legislation pending in Congress, the pressure to get someone in there must be enormous. As a result, we’ve reached a bit of a stalemate since the industry — out of hubris or ignorance or both — has proposed a series of scientists who are out of step with the public on their approach to food safety to go along with their severe conflicts of interest. Ironically, according to this Roll Call article, Caroline Smith deWaal, head of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a favorite among consumer groups for the FSIS post, registered as a lobbyist (as part of her job at CSPI). Her lobbyist status has been held up as a disqualifier, naturally. In reality, the food industry would never have swallowed such a powerful consumer activist as head of the USDA’s food safety division. Nor would they accept food safety lawyer (and notable WSU alum) Bill Marler as their overseer — he was also reportedly vetted and then passed over for the post.

But with both sides having been given veto power over the post, it remains empty. And rumors coming out of the USDA suggest that they have simply run out of candidates. Another way of looking at it is that the food industry, having been given the chance to put one of their own in the post, doesn’t seem to understand that the rules have changed, if slightly. In the end, they will undoubtedly find someone and it will likely be someone whose record is thin enough that neither side will find they can mount an adequate campaign against him or her. Whether Vilsack’s threading that needle will give the USDA’s food safety operation a strong advocate or a milquetoast is very much an open question. The performance so far of one of Vilsack’s other “compromise” candidates, Janey Thornton at the Federal Nutrition Service, has not given me a lot of faith. In the meantime, food safety in this country isn’t getting any better.

UPDATE: It’s been pointed out that ex-Monsanto man Mike Taylor, though a former acting head of FSIS under Clinton, was in fact up most recently for the chairmanship of the newly formed President’s Food Safety Working Group. He apparently did not get it — Vilsack and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius are in charge. However, he may or may not still be serving on the working group. Despite the group’s spanking new website, the administration hasn’t released the names of anyone who’s serving on it. The administration’s food safety stalemate applies over there as well.

Yesterday, more than 20 victims of foodborne illness, including surviving family members of those killed by contaminated food, gathered at the U.S. Capitol to share their stories, meet with legislators and voice support for legislation to reform our nation’s food safety system. These victims and their families urged Congress and the Obama administration to pass food safety legislation that will improve consumer protection. The families came together as part of the Make Our Food Safe Campaign, launched by major consumer and food safety groups in an effort to put a human face on the food safety crisis in the U.S. and to set a list of priorities for food safety reform.

Collectively, the stories of these victims span over a decade—from E.coli in lettuce and spinach to the recent outbreak of salmonella in peanut butter—underscoring years of food safety failures.

Karen Hibben-Levi, 67, nearly died in 2006 from E. coli poisoning after eating a burrito that was made with tainted lettuce. She met with Sen. Tom Harkin and Rep. Bruce Braley and aides to Sen. Charles Grassley. All told her that Congress is on track to pass a major overhaul of FDA.

Lyndsey Jennings was a senior at the University of Michigan when she contracted E. coli, apparently from lettuce on a sandwich. She was in the hospital for two weeks with a potentially deadly condition called pancolitis, or inflammation of the entire colon.

In 2007, Bend, Oregon-based Chrissy Christoferson’s then 10-month-old son, Beck, contracted salmonella after eating a bag of Veggie Booty. Today, Beck is a healthy 3-year old, but it’s still not clear whether he will have any long term medical conditions from the salmonella infection.

Randy Napier’s 80-year-old mother, Nellie Napier’s death was traced to peanut butter from Peanut Corp. of America’s Georgia plant, which the company sent nationwide despite repeated positive salmonella tests. Napier has struggled to understand why it took so long to remove the product from the market. “These laws must be changed,” he said.

“The stories of these victims illustrate why Congress must act now to fix our ailing food safety system,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, who attended a press briefing with the victims yesterday morning. “We cannot afford to wait. Seeing a strong food safety bill enacted will be one of my highest priorities this Congress.”

Waxman is pledging to move ahead with overhauling the FDA and said that creating a new food-safety agency is off the table for now. “Right now we want to get FDA going on this and not spend any time at all on a new bureaucracy. FDA, which regulates 80 percent of the food supply, needs authority to inspect plant records and stiffer penalties with which to punish bad operations, he said, but didn’t set a timetable for moving legislation.

More than 5,000 Americans die annually from foodborne illness—from outbreaks linked to spinach, lettuce, and peanuts. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, in that same year, there one in four Americans were victims of foodborne illness, causing 325,000 hospitalizations.

“These victims, their families and their stories must serve as the final wake-up call,” said Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations, who also attended the press briefing. “We must act now to make it happen, transform the FDA, and begin a new movement that puts public health first.” DeLauro has introduced the Food Safety Modernization Act to separate food safety regulation from drug and device approvals.

President Obama made a commitment to improve food safety in the U.S. within his first 100 days in office. Several bills have been introduced in the 111th Congress that would give the FDA the tools and authority it needs to keep our food safe, including clear regulatory oversight and accountability, safety standards for imported foods, and mandatory recall authority.

Yesterday, Waxman told FDA Week that the House Energy and Commerce Committee plans to begin marking up a food safety bill as soon as lawmakers return from the Memorial Day recess, and the legislation will almost surely include user fees. A legislative hearing is likely within the next few weeks. Their bill includes hefty user fees, which prompted staunch opposition from the food industry. Waxman acknowledged that fees are controversial but said they’re necessary to ensure a workable bill and said the food legislation needs to be “self-funding.”

In recent months, deadly food poisoning outbreaks involving spinach, pistachios and two incidents with peanuts emphasized the need for systemic reform, said Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives for Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports. Over the last two decades, she said, the FDA has lost 90 percent of its inspection force. The consequence: Inspections at facilities have fallen to an average of once every 10 years.

The lack of government oversight has resulted in some retailers demanding food facilities do their own testing. But Halloran said voluntary efforts proved ineffective after a company tested its food positive for salmonella, failed to report it, then conducted additional tests until it found a negative.

“Food is completely fundamental. Everybody has to eat; we have no choice about it,” Halloran said. “We should not have a food supply that kills people.”