"This bill is going to change a lot of the things we do, and put them on a knowledge basis instead of just an intuitive basis," Plunkett says. Some food system processes are based on habit and tradition rather than science, he notes. Often food producers say, "My father did it this way, and I do it this way, and we've never had a problem," he explains. But putting science-based standards into the equation might hedge off hazardous practices and avoid the need for many recalls in the future.
Laboratory test kitchen
In suspected food contamination cases the burden of proof has largely been on the FDA to establish a case to obtain company records. And even when the situation looked to be potentially dangerous, the agency could only recommend the company issue a recall.
Although the new bill would make it easier for the FDA to obtain company records and check for contamination, the agency will not be continuously monitoring the paper trail—or the food itself. The agency would still have "to have sort of a basis to ask for" laboratory test results and records, Olson explains. But the legislation would require food companies to use either federal or accredited labs (rather than company-chosen labs as is currently allowed) to test food safety, a step that should ensure easier regulatory access if a problem does crop up.
In the 2009 peanut butter salmonella outbreak records showed that several batches had raised red flags, but the company "believed they didn't have an obligation to share those test results because they didn't actually ship those lots," Olson says.
Making companies more accountable for providing lab tests and other internal documents might discourage them from letting safety standards slide. "Instead of letting people get sick and then finding out what's wrong—where people are the guinea pig[s]—[the goal is] putting into practice some standards" to hopefully prevent food from becoming contaminated in the first place, Plunkett says.
In addition to spotting potential problems sooner, increased surveillance should help boost knowledge about the contaminants and food safety in general. "This bill will give us a very good basis for improving our knowledge," Plunkett says. "It's going to help the FDA develop a knowledge base that it needs."
As more data are collected as part of the bill's requirements, government agencies should be able to pinpoint trends in high-risk products and processes. The new information might also help in finding the origin of the millions of food poisoning cases whose sources are unknown. "The vast majority of people getting sick, we don't know the food they ate to get sick," Olson says.
Tracking tomatoes
Unlike manufacturing components, which are often tracked which a high degree of specificity using bar codes, RFID tags and other technology to trace them through production, keeping tabs on edible soft goods can be a tad bit trickier.
After a commercially grown tomato gets picked, it will likely find its way to a sorting facility where it is tossed in with tomatoes from a variety of farms to be sorted by size or color or quality before being sold to a processor. For now, usually "you can track it up to the door of that facility," Plunkett says. "But once it goes in it loses its identity." From that location a tomato might go on to a distributor before being sold to a grocery store or to a processing plant to make paste—and then to a manufacturer that makes spaghetti sauce or canned soup.
A 2009 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services's inspector general found that 59 percent of companies were unable to provide adequate information about where their supplies were coming from and where they were going—even to comply with current law. And as the peanut butter–based salmonella outbreak earlier that year bore out, tracking those records in a timely fashion is not easy. Many records are kept on paper and companies often rely on shipping documents to trace products up or down the supply chain. In instances like the peanut butter contamination, "a rolling recall that affected literally thousands of products and hundreds of companies," Olson says, "it took months to figure out" the origin and distribution of the contaminated product.
Rights & Permissions
See what we're tweeting about
6 Comments
Add CommentThis article concentrates on industrial farming--chicken factories, mega-fields of artificially fertilized veggies, huge warehouses where products from diverse sources are aggregated. I presume the bill does too. Operations like this can afford labs and lots of paperwork, and the risk of cross-contamination and wide dissemination of their produce justifies a certain amount of oversight from the government.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, the onerous burden of conducting lab tests and creating unnecessary paperwork will bankrupt small local farms, who cannot spread this expense across a million chickens or tomatoes. And these operations, whose customers know them and who do not ship produce in from far away; are the least at risk of causing widespread health problems. The bill addresses problems that small farms are not a part of.
I don't know if it does (it's several hundred pages long, too long to read), but this bill absolutely must specifically exclude small, local farms from its purview.
The threat to small businesses is real. I have a few friends who grow gourmet mushrooms for local businesses in Tennessee. Large factory farms don't grow these types of mushrooms as their shelf-life is too short to allow for long distance transportation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey're already closing up shop as it looks like nothing will stop/alter this bill.
Bankrupt the small farmer!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat do you think law is about?
The final Senate bill includes an amendment, authored by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., that exempts farms with sales of less than $500,000 a year from the new food safety requirements if they sell most of their food directly to in-state consumers, or to consumers within a 275-mile radius of the farm.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRead more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/01/1952371/food-safety-bill-stumbles-over.html#ixzz17T6Nn3Ue
The problem with "unbeliever"'s comment is not the defense of small farmers [and the proposed Tester amendment is welcome SEE: http://tiny.cc/w5lu4 ] -- the problem is the strange "Tea-Party-like" fixation with the "Federal" -- I really don't get it. At the very least, the government is -- to some partial extent -- "ours" and subject to elements of democratic control. Big business and big corporations and the "big market" are obviously a much, much more serious problem with virtually no democratic control other than government regulation -- which is always under heavy attack. The fact that the much-maligned Federal bureaucracy has been unresponsive or ineffective in recent years [mostly Bush-Cheney-Rove -- anti-government leaders proving their own prophesy] does not mean that it can not *ever* be effective or responsive... BUT yes, scale is always a problem and "big" -- whether government or business -- is always a red flag that means special efforts are necessary to contain and control... But let's focus where the problem really lies -- on big business and the super-rich who have the power to distort and suppress democracy...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis bill may make some portions of the food industry easier to regulate, but it's going to be murder on smaller farmers and people growing food in their backyards. Shame on SA for promoting this, especially since growing food locally is better for the environment than agribusiness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this