Posted: August 29th, 2010 - 8:01pm
Source: USA Today

A top food-safety watchdog in Congress has asked federal health agencies to explain their apparently slow and "disjointed" alerts to consumers about the massive egg recall and salmonella outbreak.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, chairwoman of the Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee, sent a letter Thursday to the heads of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) seeking details on why the public wasn't warned sooner about the outbreak.
USA TODAY reported Thursday that by the end of July health officials in California and Minnesota had identified Wright County Egg as a supplier to eight restaurants that had illness clusters. But a recall wasn't announced until Aug. 13. The FDA said that although it was aware of the state's findings in July, it needed to gather invoices and other paperwork to further confirm the data before contacting the company around Aug. 9.