Food Safety

Hits:3052 2011-11-05

    After decades of steady progress, improvements to the safety of the nation's food supply fell off in the mid-2000s. Recalls of tainted eggs, peanut butter and spinach that sickened thousands of Americans led major food makers to join consumer advocates in demanding stronger government oversight.
    During the 2010 lame-duck Congressional session, the Senate and the House both approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s food-safety system. Because of a procedural glitch, the food safety bill was passed a second time by the Senate on Dec. 19 and sent to the House in the waning days of the congressional session.
    The legislation came as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new figures that lowered its estimate of the number of people who get sick or die from food poisoning each year in the United States. Officials said the revision was the result of changes in method and data analysis and not vast improvements in the nation’s food system.
    According to the new estimate, about 48 million people get sick and more than 3,000 die each year from food poisoning in the United States. While those are big numbers, they are lower than an earlier estimate of 76 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths a year that came from a 1999 study frequently cited by lawmakers and advocates seeking to pass new food safety legislation.
    The new numbers don’t necessarily mean there is less food poisoning. They simply mean that scientists think they can now do a better job of guessing how many illnesses actually occur. Government scientists said the new estimate should be viewed as the more accurate guess based on better information. The revision means that one in six Americans gets sick each year from tainted food, not one in four, as the old study had it.
    Roughly 76 million people in the United States suffer food borne illnesses yearly, 300,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Children younger than 4 are sickened by food more than those in any other age group, but adults over age 50 suffer more hospitalizations and death as a result of food-related infections.
    In response to reports like that one, and to incidents like the contaminated peanut products that are believed to have killed nine people and sickened over 20,000 starting in 2008, Congress and the Obama administration have moved to reshape the nation's food safety system. The Senate legislation, which passed by a vote of 73 to 25, would greatly strengthen the Food and Drug Administration, enabling the government to crack down on unsafe foods before they harm people rather than after outbreaks occur.
    The House had passed its own version in 2009, but in the effort to get the bill turned into law before Republicans take control of the House in 2011, Democrats passed the Senate's version in December.
    The bill would grant the F.D.A. new powers to recall tainted foods, increase inspections, demand accountability from food companies and oversee farming. But neither version would consolidate overlapping functions at the Department of Agriculture and nearly a dozen other federal agencies that oversee various aspects of food safety, making coordination among the agencies a continuing challenge.
    While food-safety advocates and many industry groups preferred the House version because it includes more money for inspections and fewer exceptions from the rules it sets out, most said the Senate bill was far better than nothing.
    Health advocates are hoping the legislation will rekindle the progress — now stalled — that the nation once enjoyed in reducing the tens of millions of food contamination illnesses that occur each year. In the case of toxic salmonella, infections may be creeping upward.
    Part of the problem is the growing industrialization and globalization of the nation’s food supply. Nearly a fifth of the nation’s food supply and as much as three-quarters of its seafood are imported, but the F.D.A. inspects less than one pound in a million of such imported foods. The bill gives the agency more control over imports.
    And as food suppliers grow in size, problems at one facility can sicken thousands all over the country. The Peanut Corporation of America’s contaminated paste was included in scores of cookies and snacks made by big and small companies. The legislation would raise standards at such plants by demanding that food companies write plans to manufacture foods safely and conduct routine tests to ensure that the plans are adequate.
    The bill would affect about 80 percent of the food supply, including fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, dairy products and processed foods that do not contain meat, which are under the jurisdiction of the agriculture department.
    Industry organizations backed the legislative push because of the high costs for many companies of the food scares of recent years. Egg sales fell nationwide after the massive egg recall in 2010, even though only two producers were implicated. Several years ago, contaminated spinach from one small producer led the entire industry’s crop to be destroyed.
    The CDC estimates, old and new, rely heavily on the idea that most cases of food poisoning never get reported. The symptoms may be too mild for a person to see a doctor. Or, even in more severe cases, testing may fail to uncover a pathogen.
    So researchers take data on reported cases and make educated guesses on how many more illnesses actually occur.
    The new estimate, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, says that only about a fifth of all food borne illness is the result of pathogens that scientists have been able to identify.
    Several of those have become household names and the stuff of headlines. Salmonella, the bacteria behind the big egg recall in the summer of 2010, is now estimated to be responsible for more than a million illnesses and 378 deaths a year. Less common but far more deadly, listeriawas estimated to cause 1,591 illnesses, with 255 fatalities. Various forms of toxic E. coli, a bacterium that has tainted hamburger meat and leafy greens, were estimated to cause about 176,000 illnesses and 20 deaths a year.
    The most common pathogen was nor virus, which is more commonly passed along in person-to-person contact. It was estimated to cause 5.4 million food borne illnesses and 149 deaths a year.