Statement
"There has been a 10-percent increase in food recalls overall between 2013 and 2018."
Comment
This does not mean our food is less safe, but rather, our surveillance, detection, and tracking has improved dramatically. Our ability to find and link contamination events through networks linked to CDC and our use of whole genome sequencing.
Statement
"Recalls of meat and poultry alone increased by 83 percent over the last five years."
Comment
But if you look at the types of recalls that we are seeing, many recalls logged in this period are related to foreign objects. USDA in conjunction with the meat industry has done a tremendous job in reducing serious outbreaks related to E. coli and Listeria.
Statement
"Karthikeyan cited the March 2018 romaine lettuce recall from Yuma, Arizona that killed five people and made more than 200 sick due to an outbreak of E.coli."
“A simple solution to this, which would have likely prevented the outbreak, would be to set public health limits on how much dangerous E. coli can be in water on produce farms,” Karthikeyan said.
Comment
This is not an easy fix. If it were easy, it would have been fixed. We understand that contaminated irrigation water is a critical factor, but keeping small levels of contaminants out of miles and miles of surface water is just not easy.
Statement
“These recalls are a warning to everyone that something is rotten in our fields and our slaughterhouses and government agencies need to make sure that the food that reaches people’s plates are safe.”
Comment
This statement is over the top. The issues we face from from contaminants that are naturally present...not something rotten. Animals of all types - cows, birds, geckos - have been associated with pathogens such as Salmonella for as long as those species have existed. So thier solution - "Prevent the sale of Salmonella-contaminated meats" is just not going to simply happen without changing the fundamental properties of the products we eat. You are not going to have pasture-raised beef with minimal chemical added that is going to be free from Salmonella.
Statement
"We’re calling on the USDA to stop allowing the sale of meat that testing reveals is contaminated with dangerous, antibiotic-resistant Salmonella."
Comment
You cannot test your way to safety. Prevention is key and looking at ways to reduce levels of contamination is important, just as it is to make sure consumers who handle and prepare foods do it correctly.
The group uses the CDC estimate as a goalpost - "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 1 in 6 people in the U.S. get foodborne illness with 128,000 individuals hospitalized and 3,000 dying every year." and suggests these number have to improve. This number is a calculated guess at best. The easiest way to improve these numbers is to give them a different statistician.
We get it...we need to improve our system. But this report looks like it was prepared by junior high school students without a real understanding of the issues and can be considered an insult to those who work everyday to our food safe.
You can find the full report here - LINK.
Philadelphia Tribune
http://www.phillytrib.com/news/local_news/watchdog-agency-report-highlights-flaws-in-nation-s-food-safety/article_ca21735e-2ca1-5a1d-811e-bfb06ab309b1.html
Watchdog agency report highlights flaws in nation’s food safety system
Ayana Jones Tribune Staff Writer
January 17, 2019
The Pennsylvania arm of a national watchdog group has released a report finding that hazardous meat and poultry recalls have increased dramatically in recent years.
PennPIRG Education’s Fund’s new report “How Safe Is Our Food?” revealed how flaws in the nation’s current food safety system led to a five-year jump in recalls of contaminated foods.
One in six people in the U.S. are impacted annually by food borne illnesses, including E. coli and Salmonella, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control. In 2018, this epidemic helped spur major recalls, which caused stores and restaurants to toss millions of pounds of meat and produce.
“The food that we nourish our bodies with shouldn’t pose a serious health risk, but systematic failures often mean that we are rolling the dice when it comes to our food safety,” said Viveth Karthikeyan, consumer watchdog associate with U.S. PIRG (Public Interest Research Group).
“We can prevent serious health risks by using common sense solutions to protect our food system from farm to fork.”
During a press conference Thursday, Karthikeyan highlighted key findings of PennPIRG’s report: There has been a 10-percent increase in food recalls overall between 2013 and 2018.
Recalls of meat and poultry alone increased by 83 percent over the last five years.
PennPIRG examined a series of individual case studies and recalls to help identify key improvements that would help ensure the safety of the nation’s food supply.
Karthikeyan cited the March 2018 romaine lettuce recall from Yuma, Arizona that killed five people and made more than 200 sick due to an outbreak of E.coli. After more than six months, the Food and Drug Administration determined the outbreak of bacteria likely stemmed from infested water used to irrigate the crop.
“A simple solution to this, which would have likely prevented the outbreak, would be to set public health limits on how much dangerous E. coli can be in water on produce farms,” Karthikeyan said.
He cited the October 2018 recall of 12 million pounds of raw JBS beef products possibly contaminated with antibiotic-resistant salmonella that caused 333 illnesses and 93 hospitalizations. Archaic laws allow meat producers to sell contaminated products and a case study indicated that the recent recall of the beef sold by JBS could have been prevented if this policy was changed.
“While there has certainly has been progress in the last decade in improving food safety, it’s clear that that hazards continue to lurk and new ones keep cropping up,” Karthikeyan continued.
“These recalls are a warning to everyone that something is rotten in our fields and our slaughterhouses and government agencies need to make sure that the food that reaches people’s plates are safe.”
Dr. Amanda Micucio, a professor of pediatrics at Sidney Kidney Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University, recommends that people adopt safety practices such as good workplace hygiene in food prep areas; cooking meat thoroughly; preventing cross contamination of food prep at home; washing produce and purchasing pasteurized products.
“It is important that we modernize and give the resources that we need to national safeguards to strengthen protections for our community when we buy our food,” she said.
Micucio said children less than 5 years old have the highest rates of foodborne illnesses.
“Most often foodborne illnesses causes diarrhea, which can progress to more severe, life-threatening infection as well,” she explained.
“Although diarrhea may seem harmless, it can cause dehydration and dehydration can be a big problem for our littlest ones.”
When asked about the impact of the government shutdown on overall food safety, Karthikeyan acknowledged the decrease in the FDA’s food safety inspections could lead to contamination.
“That could have meant that it was more likely that contamination was happening, however our research actually found that even when there were inspections were happening, there still was a high risk of people getting sick from eating contaminated food,” he explained.
“What we need is to strengthen those systems in the first place by implementing some of the solutions that we proposed in the report.”
PennPIRG called for a serious boost to the nation’s food safety system and set forth policy recommendations including testing water used for watering of produce for hazardous pathogens; companies who continue to sell products after a recall to be penalized and the USDA banning the sale of meat contaminated with antibiotic resistant strains of Salmonella
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