20 Years in Food Safety: A Look Back and Beyond

Jan. 2011 – FSMA signed into law

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the most sweeping U.S. reform of food safety law in more than 70 years, was signed into law by President Obama. The reform, which is still in the process of being implemented, is intended to improve the safety of the U.S. food supply by shifting the focus of regulators to prevention of contamination. Major components include the following.

Preventive controls. FDA has a legislative mandate to require comprehensive, prevention-based controls across the food supply.

Inspection and compliance. The law specifies how often FDA should inspect food producers, calling for risk-based and innovative inspection approaches.

Imported food safety. Importers must verify that foreign suppliers have adequate preventive controls in place. The FDA will be able to accredit third-party auditors to certify that foreign food facilities are complying with U.S. standards.

Response. Mandatory recall authority by FDA for all food products.

Enhanced partnerships. Recognition of the importance of strengthening existing collaboration among food safety agencies, from local to federal to international; directs FDA to improve training of state, local, territorial, and tribal food safety officials.

“FSMA is once-in-a-lifetime regulation,” says Virginia Deibel, PhD, director of microbiology, Covance. “We likely will not see another change in FDA law this significant in our lifetimes…the FDA no longer needs to prove an adulteration. They can instill regulatory action if they believe a facility is producing food in unsanitary conditions.”

“The FDA calls the new FSMA regulation HACCP on steroids,” adds another Food Quality & Safety Panel member.

2011 – Germany’s E. coli outbreak

A deadly strain of E. coli kills more than 40 and sickens more than 4,000 in Germany and other parts of Europe. On June 10, German authorities stated epidemiological and food-chain evidence found bean and seed sprouts were the vehicle of outbreak.

Aug.-Oct. 2011 – Multistate outbreak of listeriosis in whole cantaloupes

An outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes infections (listeriosis) sickens almost 150 people in 28 states. The outbreak was blamed for 33 deaths reported to CDC, and one miscarriage in a woman pregnant at the time of infection.

“We continue to find new pathogens, or find old pathogens in new places, causing problems that we had not seen before,” notes Gendel. “The outbreak of L. monocytogenes infections linked to whole cantaloupes is an example of such a situation. We continue to find that Mother Nature and the microbes are very good at exploiting new opportunities.”

Dec. 2012 – Hold-and-test strategy

The USDA FSIS announces that beginning in 2013 producers will be required to hold shipments of non-intact raw beef and all ready-to-eat products containing meat and poultry until they pass USDA testing for foodborne adulterants. Products will not be allowed to enter the market until they test negative for Shiga-toxin producing E. coli.

Jan. 2013 – Undeclared horse meat

Irish food inspectors detect horse meat in beef burgers and shortly thereafter similar incidents occur in more than 10 other European countries, propelling food fraud into the public spotlight. The scandal shakes consumer confidence, prompting proposed penalties for this type of labeling fraud.

The Future of Food Safety

What does the future hold? A few of our Editorial Advisory Panel members offered up their thoughts on possible developments during next 20 years for the segments of industry they specialize in. Here’s what they had to say.

Caroline Smith DeWaal, Food Safety Director, CSPI, Washington, D.C.

Our focus at the CSPI is on modernizing the food safety system in the U.S. in ways that maximize and promote consumer protection policies and programs. There are opportunities, for instance, to modernize how meat and poultry are inspected—the legal basis for meat inspection is still based on a 1906 model—and to bring inspections under a more scientific legal framework. A second emphasis is to continue to look for opportunities to merge the U.S. food safety agencies into a unified agency, combining programs at USDA and FDA. A final focus, one that already takes a lot of our time, is to work in the international sphere to ensure consumer protection is considered in the development of international standards by Codex Alimentarius and other international bodies.