Industry and Government Talk Food Safety

“The question restaurateurs heard over and over was, ‘Is your food safe?’” he said. Rivera cited a 2007 report from the Food Marketing Institute that found only 43% of consumers surveyed were confident in the safety of their restaurant food. “It’s clear that there is a strong and urgent message in these findings—a message for the entire food industry,” he said.

One food safety strategy that has worked, he said, is the collaboration between restaurateurs and suppliers. He said restaurateurs are now asking their suppliers key questions: Are our growers and packers using best practices? How closely can we monitor and audit suppliers? Who’s walking the fields to get to know the growers? How is food transported from one place to another?

“And we’re not afraid to use our checkbook to make it stick,” he said. “As an industry, we buy from companies that get food safety right, and for those who can’t or won’t, we take our business elsewhere.”

Still, Rivera emphasized that there is plenty of room for improvement.

Issues currently affecting the food industry include an increase in imported foods, emerging novel pathogens, and advances in communication technology that allow information (and rumors) about food outbreaks to spread more quickly than ever before, he said.

Rivera said the National Restaurant Association supports the following changes:

• Giving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture the authority to order mandatory recalls;
• Seeing the FDA Model Food Code used as the foundation for regulation at the state level;
• Having health inspectors adopt a standardized inspection form for restaurant inspections; and
• Improving resources for investigating outbreaks at the state level.

New Food Safety Strategies

Kari Barrett, senior advisor of Food Protection at the FDA, and Capt. David Elder, director of the Office of Enforcement within the Office of Regulatory Affairs at the FDA, spoke about the agency’s new strategies for food safety. “We really want to work with industry to build in safety first,” Barrett said.

The FDA’s new approach is more proactive than preventative, she added. “As we become a more aging population, we become more susceptible to foodborne illnesses,” Barrett said. “This increase in volume has really taxed the limits of FDA’s ability to handle it.” The new plan, announced in May 2007, focuses on prevention, intervention, and response.

In terms of prevention, Elder said that the Office of Regulatory Affairs has monthly meetings with federal food safety partners to solicit input and develop lists of specialists to enhance food safety inspections. The office also works with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to attribute pathogens to specific foods and verify when contamination occurs in the food production cycle, he said.

To improve intervention methods, the FDA wants to accredit task parties to carry out food inspections, Barrett said. The response plan involves improving risk communication to the public, industry, and other stakeholders when an outbreak occurs, she said. Barrett also pointed out that bills introduced in the House and Senate would give the FDA authority to mandate recalls and would enhance the agency’s access to food records during emergencies.

Elder asked industry to join regulators in improving food safety by staying on top of suppliers. “So many of the problems that we experience in the FDA are due to supplier issues,” he said. Every company needs to have a food safety emergency plan in place, he added. “We expect the industry to keep improving their systems, to improve their controls. Be vigilant.”

Isolated Approach Changing

Steve Steingart, industry liaison/assistant chief of the Allegheny County Food Advisory Board, part of the Allegheny County Health Department in Pennsylvania, and president of the Association of Food and Drug Officials, discussed how state and local agencies work with the FDA to improve food safety.