Are You Ready for Food-Safety Reform?

Health-care reform may have bumped national food-safety legislation from the top of Congress’s agenda in 2009, but the food industry can expect a new push in 2010 to enact laws aimed at strengthening the U.S. food-protection system. Although it could be another year before regulations are promulgated, a number of additional federal efforts to modernize the nation’s food-safety system are already taking shape. For companies that manufacture, serve, distribute and sell food, preparing for food-safety reform should be at the top of the 2010 to-do list.

PEANUTS POWER REFORM

Over the past few years, a series of high-profile, nationwide foodborne illness outbreaks associated with a range of products, from spinach to cookie dough, have shaken consumer confidence and heightened calls for comprehensive reform of our federal food-safety system. The tipping point came in early 2009 with one of the biggest and farthest-reaching food recalls in U.S. history. The widespread Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak associated with peanut-containing ingredients supplied by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) hit the U.S. public-health surveillance radar in late 2008. By late spring 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported more than 700 foodborne illnesses and nine deaths linked to PCA products across nearly all 50 states.

Traced primarily to one PCA plant in Blakely, GA, the adulterated ingredients were supplied to hundreds of manufacturing, retail and foodservice customers who used them to make or prepare further-processed products. According to FDA, nearly 4,000 products containing PCA-supplied peanut butter, paste and granules in foods such as cereal, ice cream, cookies, cakes and crackers made the agency’s recall list in 2009.

The magnitude of the PCA recall ignited a renewed drive for food-safety reform. “People in this country are outraged,” says Paul A. Hall, Ph.D., president, AIV Food Microbiology & Safety Consultants, LLC, Hawthorn Woods, IL, “not only because PCA lied about its release of adulterated products to its customers, but because it was allowed to produce the products under unsanitary conditions and no auditors or regulators raised any major flags. That created enormous pressure on the government to overhaul the system.”

PENDING BILLS ON THE HILL

The current onrush of government initiatives includes two key food-safety reform bills on the fast track for voting this year, the U.S. House of Representative’s Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 (H.R. 2749) and the Senate FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510). The proposed measures aim to give FDA increased capacities and expanded authorities to protect the food supply, for both domestic and imported goods.