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Peanut Butter Scare Stirs Congress

Food Safety Bills Picking Up Support

By Mark Huffman
ConsumerAffairs.com

March 6, 2007

• Judge Nixes Peanut Butter Class Action • FDA Failed to Follow Up on 2004 Peanut Butter Contamination • Peter Pan Returning To Store Shelves • Consumers Still Getting Sick From Tainted Peanut Butter • Fourth Peanut Butter Death Reported • Peanut Butter Recall Extended to Products Made as Early as 2004 • Peanut Butter Scare Stirs Congress • Consumers Left Holding the Peanut Butter Jar • Earlier Peanut Butter Contamination Kept Quiet • Peanut Butter Developed as a Health Food • Third Death Blamed on Peanut Butter • Peanut Butter Recalls Spread to Ice Cream & Desserts • FDA Says Peanut Butter Salmonella Outbreak Is "Ongoing" • Salmonella Confirmed in Peanut Butter • Second Death Linked To Tainted Peanut Butter • Death Linked To Tainted Peanut Butter • ConAgra Recalls Tainted Peanut Butter as Complaints Mount • FDA Widens Peanut Butter Warning • Reports of Peanut Butter-Borne Illness Increase • FDA Warns of Salmonella in Peanut Butter --- • Consumer Complaints about Peanut Butter --- • Salmonella: What It Is • More about Food Safety ...

Pressure is building in Congress and from consumer advocates for sweeping changes in the federal food inspection system, in the wake of several highly-publicized cases of tainted food entering the marketplace. Legislation to unify food inspection under a single agency is picking up co-sponsors.

Bills introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT) would establish a Food Safety Administration, with the single authority to oversee federal food safety inspections. Currently that duty is shared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and about a dozen other agencies.

Under the proposed legislation, the Food Safety Administration would be an independent cabinet level agency with the authority to oversee implementation of Federal food safety inspection, enforcement, and research efforts, and to protect the public health. Dr. Sanford Miller, senior fellow at the University of Maryland Center for Food, Nutrition, and Agriculture Policy, strongly supports the measure, saying the present system is not up to the task.

"The FDA simply doesn't have the resources to do the research and carry out the inspections that are needed," Miller told ConsumerAffairs.com. "Right now, our resources are scattered among different agencies, and none of them have what they need to do the job. In fact, there are counties in the Washington, DC area that have a budget larger than the FDA's total budget."

Miller said research is also a key, but often overlooked, weapon in the battle to protect food. New methods of inspection are constantly being developed and inspectors need to be trained in how to carry them out. Miller said research can also shed light on how new bugs are being produced and where they're coming from.

Currently, federal agencies are trying to stretch their meager resources to do the job. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service recently announced a timetable for implementing what it called a "risk-based" approach to inspections; plants that have a history of non-compliance will get more scrutiny while problem free plants won't get as much.

"I think it is a mistake for FSIS to move forward with risk-based inspections at this time, and I will be monitoring what happens very closely," DeLauro said. "I am very concerned that the plan FSIS has released is not thoroughly developed and is being advanced in absence of the necessary and comprehensive data that would allow them to accurately assess risk."

While the bills advanced by DeLauro and Durbin are getting a new look in the wake of the peanut butter salmonella outbreak, Miller foresees a tough sell when it comes to getting industry onboard.

"Some members of the industry are afraid of changing the system," he said. "They're at least comfortable with the way it is now, and while they know it has many flaws, they don't want to have to adapt to a new system."

FDA inspectors, arriving after the fact, have confirmed the presence of salmonella in ConAgra's Georgia plant. Miller says there are many possible ways the plant became contaminated with salmonella, and the exact cause may never be known. But he says it doesn't take much to introduce serious trouble to the food supply.

"One worker comes in sick one day, and if there's a breakdown in protection, those germs get introduced to a system that might handle a huge amount of product," he said.

He says a unified food inspection agency, with increased resources, could help control an increasingly complex food supply.

"Food used to be very local and very simple. Now, it's complex and its various components can come from sources all over the world," he said. "The challenges are getting greater and the problems will only get worse."

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