Bumpy Path to Food Safety: The Implementation of FSMA

A permanent training facility opened in September at the University of Maryland’s Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in College Park. The International Food Safety Training Laboratory will bring in academic experts from the university and regulators from the FDA, the USDA, and the EPA to train foreign technicians and scientists using equipment provided by the Waters Corporation. The first group, technicians and lab supervisors from China and Indonesia, focused on detecting pesticide contamination. “We’re giving students unparalleled insight into the way federal regulators operate and how best to apply their techniques to conditions back home,” said Janie Dubois, IFSTL director.

Also working to improve food security and safety is the United States Pharmacopeia, an independent, nonprofit standards-setting organization. Through the Food Chemicals Codex, the USP establishes specifications and test methods for food ingredients, chemicals, and additives.

“Quality is not independent from food safety,” said Markus Lipp, PhD, USP’s director for food standards. “As quality goes down, at some point it intersects with safety, and then the food product becomes unsafe. We’re trying to develop monographs that basically sit at that intersection and define where quality becomes safety,” he told Food Quality.

Gaps in the Network

The enhanced authority granted to the FDA under FSMA does not extend to the USDA, which oversees about 20% of the U.S. food supply—namely, most meat and poultry and some egg products. For instance, the USDA’s FSIS lacks the legal authority to test for Salmonella at farms or to require farmers to have a food safety plan. Court decisions have also prevented the USDA from shutting down meat-packing plants found to have had repeated Salmonella problems. But in July, the USDA tightened its standards for Salmonella in poultry slaughterhouses, reducing the percentage of raw chickens that can test positive from 20% to no more than 7.5%. Its weapon: online posting of the names of plants that don’t meet the new standards.

There are many other gaps in the food safety network. For instance, U.S. regulators are not required to test for new, virulent strains of E. coli, such as E. coli O104, which was responsible for more than 4,000 illnesses and 40 deaths during the summer. Rather, safety efforts in the U.S. have mainly focused on E. coli 0157:H7, the strain responsible for outbreaks caused by hamburger in 1993. The USDA received permission from the Office of Management and Budget to expand the E. coli ban for raw beef to include six other strains, but O104 was not among them.

On the plus side, there is growing evidence that testing for foodborne pathogens is effective. Several growers, including True Leaf Farms in San Juan Bautista, Calif., voluntarily submitted romaine lettuce and spinach samples to the FDA earlier in 2011 as part of a research program into early detection of contamination. Listeria contamination was found in at least three batches, including one that led to a 30,000-pound recall in September. Between 1996 and 2008, 82 foodborne illnesses were linked to fresh produce, one-third of them being E. coli in leafy greens, according to the FDA. Under FSMA, the agency is required to expand this and other testing programs.

“It may appear to the consumer that the food supply is less safe than it used to be because of the number of outbreaks that we see,” said Dr. Bailey. “But I maintain it’s just the opposite. The food supply is safer because we now have the ability to recognize outbreaks and stop them.”