Do people really expect government to magically make food safe?

Government sets expectations and minimal standards, that’s why tax dollars are spent, but the whining about a lack of a U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary for Food Safety has taken on histrionic tones.

Given the ridiculous size of the U.S. budget deficit, and I don’t wanna go all Ross Perot here, but the salary savings from not filling the post have to at least be considered.

Elizabeth Weise writes in today’s USA Today that calls from consumer advocates and politicians are growing louder for the Obama administration to name an undersecretary for food safety at the Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, a position unfilled for more than a year.

What kind of calls? Writing uninformed blog posts is hardly a call. And who are these consumer advocates? How is that defined?

Weise writes  that some consumer advocates say some fights only an undersecretary-level appointee can undertake include:

•Getting needle-tenderized meat, which can push E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella deep into steaks and chops where cooking doesn't easily kill it, labeled so consumers know it shouldn't be eaten rare. A current outbreak linked to this type of meat has sickened 21 people.

•Giving the USDA the right to name not just grocery stores that have sold recalled meat, but also restaurants.

•Using live video to monitor animals in pens, allowing short-staffed inspectors to do more.

Any retail chain concerned about consumers could institute any of those changes today. The best should do so without nagging from the nanny state.
 

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In the food-related risks category, Maple Leaf-listeria, Odwalla-E. coli O157:H7 and Natural Selections-spinach have all been held up as communication role models.

They all sucked. And a lot of people got sick and died.

That’s because food safety and other risks require effective and accurate assessment, management and communication. Fail at any one, and you’re going down. 

The New York Times reports this morning that the Harvard Business School teaches future executives the gold standard in brand crisis management. The model dictates that a company should communicate clearly with the public about a crisis, cooperate with government officials, swiftly begin its own investigation of a problem and, if necessary, quickly institute a product recall.

The template is based on Johnson & Johnson’s conduct in 1982 (above, right), when several people died after taking tainted Tylenol pills. The company’s reaction to the crisis is widely regarded as exemplary.

I was never impressed with Harvard. Others are. I told a leading Canadian supermarket chain years ago it was really dumb to sell unpasteurized apple cider. They didn’t pull the product until two years later when their president-thingy went to Harvard and heard from an Odwalla dude it may be dumb to sell juice with unpasteurized apple cited as the base.

But last week, Johnson & Johnson appeared to abandon its own template, stunning a few business school professors. Its conduct also drew harsh criticism from federal officials.

On Friday, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Johnson & Johnson, announced the recall of several hundred batches of popular over-the-counter medicines, including Benadryl, Motrin, Rolaids, Simply Sleep, St. Joseph Aspirin and Tylenol.

According to a federal inspection report, the response was anything but swift. The recall came 20 months after McNeil first began receiving consumer complaints about moldy-smelling bottles of Tylenol Arthritis Relief caplets, according to a warning letter sent by the Food and Drug Administration to the company on Friday. Since then, a few people have also reported temporary digestive problems like nausea, vomiting and stomach pain, the agency said.

The McNeil unit of Johnson & Johnson had recalled some batches of the arthritis drug at the end of 2009. But the company did not conduct a timely, comprehensive investigation, did not quickly identify the source of the problem, and did not notify authorities in a timely fashion, prolonging consumer exposure to the products, the warning letter said.

Analysts said the company’s seemingly slow response appeared out of character for one of the most trusted corporate brands in America, the maker of beloved household products like Johnson’s Baby Shampoo and Band-Aids.

And the recall, they said, had the potential to encourage consumers, who may have perceived name-brand medicines as being a higher quality worth their premium prices, to switch to less expensive drugstore brands.

Johnson and Johnson also makes No More Tears baby shampoo, and, as one of the comedy shows noted last week, it still makes babies cry.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports tomorrow (today) that the process of checking food safety standards at NSW hospitals, aged-care facilities and other food handling businesses has been quietly privatised by the State Government, leading to fears of an increase in food poisoning outbreaks among the sick and elderly.

Previously, companies and institutions known as ''high-risk food businesses'' had to undergo regular, rigorous audits by the government-run NSW Food Authority, which examined storage, preparation and hygiene.

But the Government changed the rules in October to hire private auditors to inspect the facilities.

Private auditing has been criticised in the construction industry because of the view that businesses seek out auditors whose inspections are less rigorous in an attempt to reduce compliance costs.

The result is pressure on all auditors to ''go soft'' on clients in order to retain clients and attract more.

Introduced with little fanfare, the new food safety auditing system has drawn a furious response from organisations representing older people and from the NSW Greens, who say the Government has abandoned its responsibility to maintain food safety standards for the sake of cost cutting.

That assessment seems overly dramatic. Although the auditors involved in the Peanut Corporation of America fiasco have left a black mark on auditors for decades.

The new minister, Steve Whan, said the changes would give businesses more flexibility and avoid cost duplication without compromising food safety levels.

''Some businesses may continue using the Food Authority officers as auditors and we believe many licensed food businesses will continue this way.''

He said there was a rigorous approval process for businesses and auditors wanting to operate under the new system. All businesses would have their first audit conducted by the authority, and only premises performing well would be allowed to use a private auditor.
 

If the American beef industry is as proud of its safety record as a couple of spokesthingies write in the N.Y. Times today, then take that safety record directly to consumers at retail, instead of bland and empty statements about the safest food in the world.

Tell consumers which meat has no E. coli O157:H7 or other dangerous types of E. coli, and back up such claims with meaningful data. Tell consumers and food service outlets which steaks have been needle tenderized, meaning they need to be cooked to a higher internal temperature. Make food safety claims available at retail and food service so consumers can actually choose.

Re “More Perils of Ground Meat” (editorial, Jan. 10):
Instead of encouraging efforts to improve food safety, you demonize a company that had the courage to invest in innovative technology proved to be effective in reducing dangerous pathogens.
The American food safety system is the highest standard in the world, and our ground beef is the safest.
According to the most recent information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s FoodNet Data, there have been no significant increases in food-borne illness since 2005, and there were significant declines before then.
Furthermore, recent analysis by the Food Safety and Inspection Service for E. coli O157:H7 shows that in the last year the percent of positive raw ground beef samples has dropped from to 0.30 percent from 0.47 percent at federally inspected establishments.
Furthermore, where there was a modest increase detected in raw ground beef components, Beef Products Inc.’s rate of positives is well below industry averages (0.05 percent for 2009 versus 0.99 percent).
Food safety is the No. 1 goal of industry, government and consumers. Beef Products’ technology, which has been approved by both the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration — as is thoroughly set forth on its Web site — provides consumers safe products.
Jeremy Russell
Director of Communications
and Government Relations
National Meat Association
Oakland, Calif., Jan. 11, 2010
•
To the Editor:
I’ve been involved in beef safety research since college, and I don’t recognize the industry you’ve depicted in recent articles.
Your readers probably don’t realize how many different individuals — university researchers, lab technicians, quality assurance managers and so many others — work daily to bring safe beef to dinner tables across the country.
E. coli O157:H7 and other food-borne threats are tough, adaptable foes. But the people who raise and package beef share a commitment to aggressively finding and applying safety solutions that keep them out of our food.
Beef farmers and ranchers alone have invested more than $28 million since 1993 in beef safety research, and the industry as a whole invests an estimated $350 million a year on safety.
I know the people of the beef industry, and I’m proud of the work we do every day to provide safe food.
Mandy Carr Johnson
Executive Director of Research
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association
Centennial, Colo., Jan. 11, 2010


 

In the burgeoning category of anyone-can-put-out-a-BS-press-release-and-have-it-pass-for-food-safety-news, the Canadian branch of consultants Douche Deloitte released a report yesterday that concluded the requirements and benefits of superior food safety management extend far beyond onsite food plant and production measures and protocols.

Who writes this stuff?

"Globalization and increased consumer awareness have made food safety a critical issue that must be addressed," says Stephen Brown, National Leader, Consumer Products Industry, Deloitte.
"Companies that take a broad view of food safety management and supply chain integrity will have the most effective food safety programs," adds Brown. "The traditional view of food safety as a plant management responsibility is too narrow and does not take into account the cultural and other organizational considerations that drive food safety effectiveness."

This is going straight into my food safety journalism curriculum as an example of what not to do.
Worse, Sarah Schmidt of Canwest News Service reported this report as news.
The report also notes it's just good business for a company to reduce food safety risks.

Duh.

Delectable gourmet food is just as susceptible to germs as the supermarket stuff.

That’s the number-1 thing that gourmet grocers won’t tell you according to this Smart Money list adapted from the book "1,001 Things They Won't Tell You: An Insider's Guide to Spending, Saving, and Living Wisely," by Jonathan Dahl and the editors of SmartMoney.

Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety and Quality Enhancement at the University of Georgia, suggests self-control. "I personally would not buy any food exposed to handling," he says, practically shuddering at the notion of people "taking samples with their fingers." He points out that these visually-appealing foods may carry germs like salmonella and campylobacter jejuni.

Richly-stocked salad bars are probably the worst offenders. Warm temperatures and unsterile prepping conditions can transform a Greek salad into a stomach-turning petri dish. "With some of these salad-bar items, after they're cut, the diseased organisms can grow and increase to dangerous levels," says Joseph Frank, a professor in the department of food, science and technology at the University of Georgia. Even at the most posh gourmet emporiums, he adds, "there are no disease-free guarantees."
 

Journalist Michael Pollan has polled readers and come up with 64 rules to govern eating.

But he forgot the most important one: ignore lists.

The Internet is useful for all sorts of things beyond food safety – it’s been a boon for genealogy research.

Which is how we ended up meeting with Carl yesterday at The Fountain Inn in Tipton, U.K., not far from Birmingham.

At one point Carl asked, “So what do you think of it over here?”

“Oddly comfortable.”

Carl got in touch with me electronically after I posted something about William Perry, aka The Tipton Slasher, who was the bare-knuckle heavyweight boxing champ of England from 1850-1857.

Carl, who is descended from one of William Perry’s brothers, had detailed genealogies, constructed from birth and wedding certificates from the area. Tipton’s favorite son, the Slasher, had a son, William Perry II, who had a daughter, Sally or Sarah (she was called both), who married George Edward Powell I. They had a son, George Edward Powell II, who was my grandfather (and there’s nothing noble about the I and II; as cousin Keith said, they were grafters, which in Brit-speak means hard workers). So I got it wrong before, and the Slasher was my great-great-great grandfather.

Sorenne and I posed in front of the statue of gramps in the park across from the Fountain Inn, which was the Slasher’s headquarters and training site before he became champ, and adjacent to one of the many canals constructed in the early 1800s to feed the industrial machine that was Birmingham. Perry started fighting fellow boatmen on the local canals to determine who would be first through the lockgates.

And while we were too early for food, the Fountain Inn did proudly display its food license and level II catering certificate. The slideshow below has lots of cool pics.