During today’s announcement, Secretary Sebelius thanked Rep. John Dingell and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, longstanding champions of food safety, before she introduced her FSWG partners, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack and Vice President Joe Biden.

In the audience for today’s announcement were family members of foodborne illness victims, and VP Biden said changes in food safety laws were “long overdue,” and had been unchanged since 1906…”since Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle.” He noted that part of his work with the Middle Class Task Force was ensuring food safety, and made a long statement about imported foods, processed foods, and how we’re all put at risk by these.

“In the past, we’ve focused on food safety problems when they occur, now we’re putting our focus on prevention,” said VP Biden. “The tragedy of someone getting sick from food is made worse by someone else getting ill after we know what’s making people ill.”

“The President has made food safety an important national priority,” VP Biden said.

He closed by thanking Brian Sylberman, president of the Produce Marketing Association, someone who has been critical in promoting food safety for the produce industry.

Jointly, VP Biden and Secs. Sebelius and Vilsack announced the following imperatives for the new food safety approach:

(1) Prioritizing prevention
(2) Strengthening surveillance and enforcement
(3) Improving response to and recovery from outbreaks

In an effort at better management and coordination, the FSWG is seeking to coordinate the activities of agencies that oversee food issues, and has created two new positions:

1. Deputy Commissioner for Foods, to oversee and coordinate its efforts on food, including food safety. This position, reporting to the FDA Commissioner, will be empowered to restructure and revitalize FDA’s activities and work with USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, and other agencies, in developing a new food safety system. —The ostensible Taylor position…
2. Chief Medical Officer, at FSIS: Within the next three months, USDA will create a new position, Chief Medical Officer, at FSIS. This position will report to the Under Secretary for Food Safety, and will enhance USDA’s commitment to preventing foodborne illness.

Also announced: Some Big New Rules, many of which have a three-month time frame; some have a longer time frame…

• Reducing Salmonella in Eggs: The Food and Drug Administration is issuing a final rule to control Salmonella contaminationof eggs during production. This rule is estimated to reduce the number of foodborne illnesses associated with consumption of raw or undercooked contaminated shell eggs by approximately 60%, or 79,000 illnesses every year, and will generate annual savings of over $ 1 billion.

• Cutting Salmonella Risk in Poultry Products: By the end of the year, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) will develop new standards to reduce the prevalence of Salmonella in turkeys and poultry. The agency will also establish a Salmonella verification program with the goal of having 90 percent of poultry establishments meeting the new standards by the end of 2010.

• Reducing the Threat of E. coli O157:H7: The bacterial strain called E. coli O157:H7 causes diarrhea, abdominal pain, and fever in approximately 70,000 Americans each year. In an estimated one in 15 patients, complications arise potentially resulting in intense pain, high blood pressure, kidney failure, and even death. In recent years, this bacterium has caused outbreaks associated with meat and spinach.

• Stepped Up Enforcement in Beef Facilities: FSIS is issuing improved instructions to its workforce on how to verify that establishments handling beef are acting to reduce the presence of E. coli. Also, FSIS is increasing its sampling to find this pathogen, focusing largely on the components that go into making ground beef.

• Preventing Contamination of Leafy Greens, Melons, and Tomatoes: By the end of the month, FDA will issue commodity-specific draft guidance on preventive controls that industry can implement to reduce the risk of microbial contamination in the production and distribution of tomatoes, melons, and leafy greens. These proposals will help the Federal government establish a minimum standard for production across the country. Over the next two years, FDA will seek public comment and work to require adoption of these approaches through regulation.

• Building a National Traceback and Response System: A system that permits rapid traceback to the source of foodborne illness will protect consumers and help industry recover faster. Yet despite the dedicated efforts of food safety officials across the country, our current capacity to traceback the sources of illness suffers from serious limitations.

• Developing Industry Product Tracing Systems: Within three months, FDA will issue draft guidance on steps the food industry can take to establish product tracing systems improving our national capacity for detecting the origins of foodborne illness.

• Creating a Unified Incident Command System: Within three months, Federal agencies will implement a new incident command system to address outbreaks of foodborne illness. This approach will link all relevant agencies, as well as state and local governments, more effectively to facilitate communication and decision-making in an emergency.

• Strengthening the Public Health Epidemiology Program: Within six to twelve months, FSIS will improve collaboration with states by increasing the capacity of its successful public health epidemiology liaison program to State Public Health Departments through additional hires and expanded outreach.

• Updating Emergency Operations Procedures: Within the next month, Federal food safety agencies will ask State and local agencies to update their emergency operations procedures to be consistent with the new “Guidelines for Foodborne Disease Outbreak Response” soon to be issued by the Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response. Implementation of these guidelines will lead to quicker response, better communication, and better coordination by all Federal, State, and local agencies.

• Improving State Capacity: The CDC will work with collaborating States to evaluate and optimize best practices for aggressive and rapid outbreak investigation, and will launch a new system to facilitate information-sharing and adoption of best practices within 12 months.

• Using New Technologies to Communicate Critical Food Safety Information by Creating an Improved Individual Alert System: The federal government will enhance www.foodsafety.gov to better communicate information to the public and include an improved individual alert system allowing consumers to receive food safety information, such as notification of recalls. Agencies will also use social media to expand public communications. The first stage of this process will be completed in 90 days.

• Improving Organization of Federal Food Safety Responsibilities: Building a more effective safety system requires federal agencies to improve management of their food safety responsibilities and coordinate more effectively with each other.

• Strengthening Federal Coordination to Address Cross-Cutting Problems: The Food Safety Working Group will serve as a mechanism to break down stovepipes, address cross-cutting issues and increase coordination of food safety activities across the U.S. government. HHS and USDA will continue to serve as the Working Group’s leadership, bringing information and experience from the front lines of food safety to their sister agencies across the government. The Group will monitor the implementation of its recommendations, regularly assess performance metrics, ensure that food safety policies are adequately coordinated with efforts to safeguard the food supply from deliberate tampering, and respond to new challenges.

This post originally appeared on Obamafoodorama.

President Obama, on the other hand, entered his role with a stack of urgent crises on his desk. Food advocates couldn’t help but have lowered expectations of how he would address the decline of farming and of rural populations; lobbyists working in the USDA, FDA and EPA; the quality of school lunch; the 36 million Americans suffering from hunger; energy independence beyond the empty promise of ethanol, and more. The real food lobby has gotten used to these vital issues taking a back seat, but that didn’t mean they were going to stop asking our young, hip and multitasking president to change all that.

And as if that list of problems facing the food system weren’t enough, food safety became the main domestic issue (aside from the economy) thrust into daylight of this administration, beginning with the massive peanut butter recall back in January, then followed by Nicholas Kristof’s illumination of increased incidences of the virulent, untreatable bacteria MRSA (Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus) occurring near factory hog farms in the Midwest, and now culminating in the swine flu, which might have had its origins in a Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) cesspool at a million-head-per-year Smithfield hog farm in Perote, Mexico.

It seems, however, that President Obama and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack still view agriculture as separate from the problems we face in health care, environmental policy and energy policy. He has yet to show that he understands that in order to address food safety with lasting effect, his cabinet must address the underlying issues facing our food system first, including its reliance on oil and the unhealthy food it produces. I hate to do it, but I have to give the President a “C-” on his agriculture policy thus far, bringing the Obamas to a combined grade of “B-”.

“It’s time that our leaders engage in whole systems solutions for the problems facing not only our economy, but also agriculture,” said David Murphy of Food Democracy Now!, a sustainable food advocacy group, when asked about the matter. “Failure to do so will only lead to an increase in the number and severity of future food safety outbreaks.”

Back in March, it seemed as if Obama was prepared to change this status quo on food safety, with the announcement of a Food Safety Working Group (FSWG), following the recall of over 1500 products containing contaminated peanut butter, confirming what had been known for some time by those who study the food system: contamination in an industrial agriculture model can spread fast and far. Obama insisted with the introduction of the FSWG that he was going to take food safety seriously. But then the committee seemed to drop like a stone into the annals of policy making.

Why haven’t we continued to hear more from the FSWG? Perhaps because Former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius was held up until yesterday in the Senate, when she was finally confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Now that she is on board, there is again hope that food safety issues will be front and center (if only because of the fear surrounding the swine flu) and will hopefully get beyond the simplistic message that we can eat pork without worry.

“One place President Obama could start is to call for more regulation of Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) to make sure that they operate in accordance with the clean air and clean water acts,” Murphy said. “Another step would be to phase out the use of antibiotics in livestock that are important in the medical treatment of humans. The current swine flu pandemic should be a significant teachable moment for consumers, legislators and livestock producers. There are some things we can no longer afford to ignore. It’s time to put people over profits.”

Food safety requires manageable scale. And it requires honest, unbiased risk assessment. If a hog confinement operation was indeed the origin of the swine flu, we should not be afraid to consider the possibility that the way we are raising animals for meat in this country is dangerous and will never be safe.

Let that honest assessment begin today at 9:30 am, when 20 victims of foodborne illness, including surviving family members, will be in Washington, DC to share their stories and to call on Congress to pass food safety legislation. 76 million people get sick every year from food contamination, and 5,000 lose their lives. A band-aid will never solve this problem.

There is still hope that President Obama will recognize the power of local food economies of scale. With unemployment at 8.5% as of March and growing, its time for him and his cabinet to think seriously about the original green job: farming. He can begin by initiating a “farmer corps” program to incubate new farmers, similar to one recently implemented in Japan. Furthermore, instead of just talking about ending subsidies for industrial commodity farms, he should take action, minimizing payments and thereby incentivizing diversity in growing.

As the veil is lifted and consumers continue to learn through films like Food, Inc., Fresh and Meat the Truth about the impact of the food choices we make, the voices pushing Obama to deal with our unwieldy and outdated food system will only grow louder.  I hope that following this, the President and his cabinet will address food as the serious and vital issue that it is, and the President will deserve an “A” for his agriculture policy in the next 100 days.

Today a broad array of 29 farmers, consumer groups, businesses and other organizations sent a letter to Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, urging her to veto HR 2121, a bill passed by the Kansas State Legislature last week which would require an additional disclaimer on labels for dairy products produced from cows not treated with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbGH or rbST), a genetically engineered, artificial hormone that induces cows to produce more milk. (To read more about the problem with rbGH, check out this earlier Civil Eats post.) The bill was sent yesterday to Governor Sebelius, who has ten days to veto it.

“Since the FDA’s controversial decision to approve the use of rbGH, questions have only grown about its safety for humans,” said Dr. Michael Hansen, Senior Scientist for Food Safety for Consumers Union. “HR 2121 interferes with consumers’ right to know what is in their food and how it’s produced and farmers and dairies have the right to tell them.” Consumers Union sent a similar letter to Sebelius urging her to veto the bill.

The required disclaimer would read: “the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has determined there are no significant differences between milk from cows that receive injections of the artificial hormone and milk from those that do not.” That statement is based on an 18-year-old FDA review; however, FDA’s own publications, as well as subsequent scientific studies have shown that there are significant differences, some of which may affect human health. The Kansas bill also goes against long-established Federal policy as outlined by the FDA in a July 27, 1994 letter to New York Department of Agriculture and Markets: “The bottom line is that a contextual statement is not required…and in no instance is the specific statement ‘No significant difference has been shown…’ required by FDA.”

In addition, the Legislature tacked on the dairy labeling rules of HB 2295 as a rider on HB 2121 without a hearing in the Senate Agriculture Committee. This denied the numerous opponents of labeling restrictions the chance to testify. Even with the lack of proper debate, the bill barely passed the Senate by a 22-15 vote, just two votes short of failing, demonstrating that there is barely a mandate for labeling changes in Kansas.

“As she reviews this bill, and ascends to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, we urge Governor Sebelius to veto this bill, protect the health of Kansas’ citizens, and to leave a legacy of support for the public interest, not special interests,” said Patty Lovera, Assistant Director at Food & Water Watch.

Due to growing consumer demand, companies are removing rbGH from their dairy products across the country. In addition, over 160 hospitals all over the country have pledged to serve rbGH-free products and the past president of the American Medical Association said in a letter to all AMA members that hospitals should serve only milk produced without rbGH.

“Kansas is taking a step in the wrong direction, as more than half of the 100 largest dairy processors in the country have gone partially or completely rbGH-free to satisfy consumer demand,” said Heather Whitehead, True Food Network Director at the Center for Food Safety. “If dairies decide not to label milk as rbGH-free due to these unnecessary labeling requirements, or decide not to sell their products in Kansas, citizens will be denied the chance to make informed choices about what kind of dairy products to buy.”

Local retailers are also concerned about the effects of the labeling requirements. “We hope that Governor Sebelius will veto HB 2121 which could create a financial hardship for the state’s mid-sized and small dairy producers and retailers, and could raise barriers to interstate commerce,” said Devrin Forte, Store Manager at Topeka Natural Foods.

Food & Water Watch and Center for Food Safety both have action alerts so you can tell Governor Sebelius that consumers have the right to know what’s in the milk, and dairies have a right to tell them.

Photo: PapaC1