Picking up the Pieces

The rations, routinely consumed by British soldiers, sat in a warehouse in Arkansas for more than a month. According to The Washington Post, some of the food blocked for delivery by the U.S. is set to expire in early 2006 and U.S. taxpayers are spending $16,000 a month to store the meals. The State Department, the Post reports, is “quickly and quietly looking for a needy country to take them.”

Then came the resignation of Michael Brown as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency after his qualifications and for what critics call a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina’s destruction came under fire. David Paulison, the director of FEMA’s preparedness division, has since been named interim director.

Despite what could be considered off-color reconstruction hues, the resolve to rebuild and survive is still strong, and the LSU professors say federal guidelines, which fit snugly in any HACCP or SSOP program, on dealing with the hurricane aftermath have helped bring many businesses and operations out of the ashes.

According to FDA’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there was concern that the prolonged flooding might lead to an outbreak of health problems for those who remained in the hurricane-affected areas. In addition to dehydration and food poisoning, there was potential for communicable disease outbreaks of diarrhea and respiratory illness, all related to the growing contamination of food and drinking water supplies in the area.

It was also reported that E. coli had been detected at unsafe levels in the waters that flooded New Orleans. The CDC also reported on Sept. 7 that five people had died of bacterial infection from drinking water contaminated with Vibrio vulnificus.

But the microbial impact paled in comparison, Bell says, noting that state and federal agencies were more than diligent when testing not only potentially potable water sources, but Gulf and lake waters as well.

“They found only low levels of pathogens and tested for more than 200 chemicals,” he says. “There was not a huge contamination or environmental impact that people had to be concerned about. Bacterial pathogens or chemicals are actually safe levels.”

Bell adds that the contaminated water-food issue may have been blown out of proportion by the media.

“The problem is you have people on television saying, don’t eat anything, it’s not safe,’ painting these scary pictures, but there is no cause for concern. You have to wait until the tests come back,” he says.

Kevin Smith, FDA’s manager of federal/state programs in the Division of Federal/State Relations in Rockville, Md., said the predominant issue was power loss, and because refrigeration was down, potentially hazardous food had to be discarded.

Smith was one of several federal officials deployed to hurricane impacted areas. In New Orleans, he focused on the retail arena, assisting about 1,000 establishments, from grocery stores, restaurants, day care centers, nursing homes and schools, in reopening for business.

“Everyone was willing to discard any perishable food. And then the damage to the facilities, that was the next concern, and mold,” Smith says. “Sometimes mold spores blew in and took hold in a lot of places. So, the containers of non-perishable food that had mold on them had to be thrown out, too.”

According to general considerations, handed down by FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) for retail and food service establishments, businesses were instructed to conduct a complete self-inspection to ensure that normal operations can be resumed safely and without compromising food safety.

“For full service operations involving complex food preparation, complete reinstatement of all public utilities is necessary before reopening,” according to the guidelines.