What Took So Long?

Why did it take almost four months after the first report of a Salmonella St. Paul infection for the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control to find the grower responsible? Two congressional hearings yesterday and today aimed at understanding why this most recent food safety scare took so long to understand. First tomatoes were implicated in the outbreak, then the FDA declared certain varieties safe, which left various states scratching their heads as to why their tomatoes weren’t cleared. Then inspectors moved on to peppers, eventually confirming that serrano peppers from Mexico tested positive for the bacterial strain. Yet tomatoes have still not been officially cleared by the FDA. The most recent statements from the FDA warn against eating raw peppers and state that tomatoes are safe, but do not indicate that tomatoes were never involved in the outbreak. It was obvious during the hearings that tomato growers are upset that stigma still surrounds their product and continues to hurt sales.

Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA), Chairman of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture, called the Salmonella St. Paul outbreak the next saga of “outbreak roulette,” and asked “which industry will be next?” Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), sponsor of the TRACE Act, H.R. 3485, which would strengthen the food industry’s traceability system, did not hesitate to call the FDA and CDC out on their faults. She called the food safety system “agonizingly slow.” In her opening statement, she asked, “Why is it that the FDA has jurisdiction over cheese pizzas, but the CDC has jurisdiction over pepperoni pizzas?”

Yesterday Dr. David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food protection at the FDA, shocked the audience by admitting that only three FDA investigators were currently in Mexico, and that none were stationed there permanently to check the food supply that enters the United States. But he was able to escape the most severe questioning by breaking the news that the FDA had only hours before discovered Salmonella St. Paul in the groundwater of a farm in Mexico that produced serrano peppers.

That did not save Bill Hubbard, former senior associate commissioner for policy, planning and legislation at the FDA, this morning, as he testified in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Hubbard was quick to discuss the flaws in his agency. He said that reduced funding has led to a reduced staff and a reduced ability to perform the agency’s essential duties. He also noted that while the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 requires that food industries be able to trace their food supply back one step and forward one step, the FDA receives only partial reports, if any, from many food producers.

DeGette came to his rescue by supporting his claim that not all of the FDA’s problems are their fault. The FDA had pushed for additions to the Bioterrorism Act that would have included electronic food tracing records, the identification of each box of tomatoes with individual farm lot numbers, and a consistent recording format, all of which were denied.

Ed Beckman of the California Tomato Cooperative argued today that his company could successfully trace back their tomatoes “in 35 minutes.” Parker Booth of Delta Prepack Company even brought physical evidence of how his company maintains efficient and reliable traceability. He held up a cardboard tomato box which had, printed on the side, the individual farm lot number that the tomatoes came from, along with other state identification codes. This code, provided by a commercial system called HarvestMark, labels all of his company’s tomato boxes, and costs about a penny per box. It could be a good idea to implement on a federal level.

Tags: CDC, FDA, public health

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