| Women in Agriculture |
Tape #332 - Food Safety
...yet our United States Department of Agriculture, and it’s really my
pleasure to be able to moderate this session, and I hope to illicite some
interesting discussion from all of here about this very important issue of food
safety. I thought that by way of
introduction to this session, that I might make a few comments about an
organization called the Kodaks Allimintaris Commission. I think it’s important for all of us that
are interested in food safety to have an appreciation for the organization that
is really the international standards setting body for food safety. So, I thought I might just spend a minute or
two briefly describing for your the Kodaks Alminiaris what it’s roles and
responsibilities are and that would provide kind of an umbrella for our
discussion. The presenters in our
session today are all people who I have heard speak before. Are all very knowledgeable and also very
skilled in what they do. So, I think
that you will find their presentations very interesting. We’d also like during this session to have
as much discussion as possible. So, I’ve
asked each of the presenters to keep their prepared comments to maybe 10 or 15
minutes, so that we’ll have an opportunity to ask questions of each of them
after their presentations. And also to
reserve some time at the end of the session so that we can have a discussion
about what each of them has presented.
So, by way of introduction, let me just say a few comments about
the Kodaks Allimintaris
Commission. This, as I had indicated
earlier, is an international standard setting body. It was created in 1962 and it’s actually part of the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The overall aim of the Kodaks Allimintaris Commission is to protect
the health of the public. Essentially,
the health of all consumers around the world.
And also to facilitate international trade. So it really has a dual meshing of public health protection as
well as establishing a level playing field with respect to public health
protection for food that’s engaged in international trade. Kodaks in Latin actually refers to food law
or food code. So the Kodaks
Allimintaris is an international food code.
The members of the Kodaks Allimintaris are representatives of the
different governments that are participants in the Kodaks. There are over 100 countries that are
represented. And, there representatives
to the various committees and subcommittees within the Kodaks process. Develop standards for all of the principle
food products that move in international commerce. And those food products can be processed products. They can be minimally or semi-processed
foods or they can be raw agricultural commodities. The Kodaks committees establish standards that relate to not only
the safety of food, but also the nutritional aspects of food. So, they deal with safety as well as
nutrition. And also with quality of
aspects of food. Some examples of the
types of standards that are included in the Kodaks Allimintaris are microbiological
standards, so for papagenic organisms in foods. Standards that relate to food additives, substances that are
added to food because of the specific functionally properties that they
provide. Kodaks also sets standards
with respect to pesticide residues, environmental contaminants in foods, and
also is increasingly in recent years looking at labeling of foods. As well as the methods of analyses and
sampling that are required in order to meet any of the standards that are
set. So, as you can see, the Kodaks
activities span all of the standard setting aspects that would relate to the
safety and nutritional quality of foods.
Under the general agreement on tariffs and trade, Kodaks is actually,
receiving even more prominence than it has in it’s history to date. And the World Trade Organization very much
looks to Kodaks Allimintaris as the international standard setting body for
food safety. So, I don’t know to what
extent any of you may have heard about Kodaks in the past, but it plays a very
important role and a growing role in food safety around the world.
I’d like now to introduce our first speaker for this session. She is Mrs. Margaret Glavin, and she is
Deputy Administrator of the Food Safety and Inspection Service at the US
Department of Agriculture. Maggie has
spent, I think, her entire career working with USDA. She has had a variety of different positions with the Food Safety
Inspection Service within the department since she joined FSIS in 1983. And prior to that she held a variety of
positions with the food and nutrition service, also within the Department of Agriculture.
So, her career has spanned aspects dealing with nutritional aspects of food and
food assistance programs within the Department of Agriculture. And since she’s been with the Food Safety
Inspection Service, she has primarily concentrated on safety aspects of meat
and poultry. Mrs. Glavin is going to be
talking about a model for food safety regulation for meat and poultry that is
currently the norm for us here in the United States. Mrs. Glavin.
MRS. GLAVIN: Thank you.
I am going to talk about a norm and its the one I know best. It’s how we regulate meat and poultry for
safety in the country, in the United States.
The Department of Agriculture regulates meat, poultry and egg
products. And these three products
account for approximately 1/3 of the consumers spending on food in this
country. Our roll is to ensure that
meat, poultry, and egg products are safe.
That they’re wholesome. And that
they’re properly labeled, that is informatively and correctly and honestly
labeled. In order to do this, the way
we carry out our regulatory system is in several parts. The main part being, we inspect, we have
inspectors and veterinarians in more than 8,500 federal and state meat,
poultry, and egg processing plants.
That includes both slaughter plants and plants that further process
those products into hot dogs, TV dinners, pot pies, you name it. We also, as part of our inspection arm
insure the equivalence of inspection systems of those countries that export
meat, poultry and egg products to the United States. So, we review their systems, both on paper and by on-site visits,
to make sure that those countries have systems of protection that are
equivalent to ours. We also reinspect
meat, poultry, and egg products coming into this country at the point of
entry. In addition to inspection, we
have a strong enforcement program to ensure food safety standards are being met
by the industry. And this enforcement
program goes beyond the meat and poultry plants into the distribution chain and
on into retail. We also respond to
cases of outbreaks and clusters of food borne illness and conduct
epidemiological investigations in order to determine the causes of those
illness and as appropriate to remove offending products from the market place
so that consumers can be protected. An
example of that is a recall that is going on right now, of a meat product that
was traced to an illness that occurred in New York state. And those products are being recalled so
that consumers who still have the product in their home know not to use
it. So that they won’t get sick. They can bring it back to the store where
they bought it. We also carry out a
comprehensive food safety education program to help consumers learn how to keep
food safe in the home. Our food safety
education program has a number of audiences, it includes people who work in
food service, restaurants, etcetera, but it also includes household
consumers. And in the handout packet, I
put together some of our, a selection, of our materials, our food safety
education materials that are directed at the household consumer. So, I thought that might be interesting for
you to look at.
At USDA, for meat and poultry, public health is our number one
priority. We begin a strategy of change
about three years ago, which puts our focus very firmly on preventing food
borne illness. Our goal is to address
gaps in our traditional food safety system and to better address mycrocial
pathogens. Our traditional inspection
system has been very effective in determining and keeping away from the market
place products that have obvious defects or that are keeping out of the food
chain diseased animals. But its not so
good at finding microbial contamination and keeping that out of the market
place. So, our current effort is to
adjust the system so that our efforts meet that challenge as well as the other
challenges that we’ve been meeting all along.
We require meat and poultry plants to meet certain standards. To ensure that their products are safe, wholesome,
and correctly labeled. In other words,
our responsibility is to make sure that it’s safe, wholesome and correctly
labeled, but it is the plants responsibility to produce that kind of product. So we given them certain standards they have
to meet to ensure that that is going on.
Each plant must have a standard operating procedure for sanitation, and
plants must have, this isn’t in all plants because we’re phasing this in, but
as we phase it in, plants must develop and implement a hazard analysis and
critical control point system to ensure the safety of food. In addition, slaughter plants must meet
performance standards for salmonella on their product and plants are required,
slaughter plants are also required to collect and analyze samples for generic
ecoli. And that’s to serve as marker of
how well they’re doing on their dressing procedures, how well they’re doing in
avoiding contaminating the carcass with fecal material as they dress it. We inspect more than 137 million livestock
and almost 8 billion birds every year.
There are over 7,000 inspectors in approximately, as I said, 8500
federal and state inspected slaughter and processing plants. These inspectors verify that industry is
meeting the standards that we set for them and these inspectors also take
regulatory action when necessary.
Sanitation and process control systems prevent adulteration of
products. There’s a link between a
plants ability to control processes and the eligibility of products to bear the
Department of Agricultures mark of inspection. Meat and poultry and egg products can’t be sold in interstate
and foreign commerce without this mark of inspection. Withholding the mark of inspection, therefore, shuts the plant
down. So, a plant must have good
processes, good control, in order for the inspector to apply the mark of
inspection to the product which allows the product to into commerce. Once the product leaves the plant with the
mark of inspection, we continue to monitor the primary oversight at that point
is handed over to the state and local authorities. We have concurrent authority with them, but most of the work,
once the product leaves the plant, is handled by state and local health
authorities. As I mentioned, in
addition to our inspection, our standard setting, our compliance activity, we
have a big role to play in food safety education. The focus is on those involved in producing and preparing food
from farm to table. Partnerships are
made to broaden the scope and impact of our educational efforts. Obviously, behavioral change is important to
help prevent food borne illness. Our
partnerships include a combination of various food safety initiatives, of
federal agencies responsible for food safety, we have an established partnership
for food safety education for, which is directed at Consumer Education. We’ve also formed a food safety education
and training alliance to address retail needs.
This is an area where federal, state and local government agencies are
working together and industry and retail groups have also joined us in this
activity. As I said, in the packet
which is in the back of the room, if you didn’t get one, there are some of our
consumer materials. These are the ones
that are directed, or this is a selection of those that are directed at individual
household consumers. This is one of our
newest, we have this little character has been designed, he’s Bac. He’s a really slimy green bacteria. And the little thing is Fight Bac. And this is part of, this came out of the
cooperative effort a number of federal agency’s and industry to come up with a
single food safety message so that there weren’t competing messages out
there. So that the messages were
consistent. And the message, the
overall message has four pieces, it talks about cleaning your hands, don’t
cross-contaminate, cooking to proper temperatures, and handling cooked product
properly, chilling a product promptly and keeping it chilled. So, this is the sort of base of a broad
campaign to aim at a variety of different audiences, but to make sure that they
all get the same basic message about the four steps that we’ve agreed on. Here’s Mr. Bac in Spanish. We also have a lot of other products, such
as something on kitchen thermometers, which we are pushing real hard for meat
and poultry. It’s extremely important
to use kitchen thermometers. Some
handouts on the basics of safe food handling.
Something on bacteria causing food borne illness. Here again, are guidelines for what you do
when you shop, when you’re in the kitchen, when you’re cooking, and when you’re
storing your storing your food after you’ve used it. And then this is a nice little coloring book for children. And, I know some of the WIC outlets, our
Women Infants and Children’s outlets, use this coloring book. And it has very simple good handling
practices that we hope both the mothers and the children who use this will
begin to notice and learn as they go through it. So, this is aimed at children and daycare center settings and schools
and as I said, in our WIC outlets we’ve used that. I’ve also included for all of you who are somewhat local a little
rolodex which gives our web site, our meat and poultry hotline number, our
hotline is for consumers to call in with questions on food safety. It’s used by industry as well, but its aimed
at consumers and that’s always it’s available 24 hours a day for recorded kinds
of information. And it’s available all
day long 5 days a week for actually talking to a real human being and getting
your questions answered. We also have a
fast fax for media inquiries and so forth.
Our phone numbers and web site information and hot line number are
there. So, with that that, are there
questions about what we do, how we do it, anything I can clarify, answer?
Q Inaudible.
MRS. GLAVIN: Okay. I’m going to repeat your question so
everyone heard it, and if I get it wrong, let me know.
The question is, when we have a food safety problem or perception of a
problem, how do we make sure that consumers have good information and control
or try to prevent unnecessary concern or alarm as consumers.
Is that, is that your question?
Let me talk a little bit about the incident we have going on right
now. And I think that’s a good
example. First of all, we work very
closely with other agencies including the Centers for Disease Control, so that
we become aware of illness which may be food related. And so, in this case we had an illness in New York. A woman became ill with ecoli 0157H7. The epidemiologist, there are basically
state and local epidemiologist at this point, began looking into this
case. Began to hon in on hamburger as a
possible cause or source of this illness.
Both the store, where the product was bought, we knew where the product
was from this epidemiological work, we were able from that to trace back to the
stores suppliers. And the suppliers and
the store and the local people and the federal people began looking for more
product. The product that was in the
consumers possession, was in fact, contaminated. But it was open package.
And it was an open package that frankly had been quite abused. It had been thawed and left on the counter
and put back in the freezer and thawed again.
And so, so, we weren’t sure whether that, what the source of the
contamination was. It might have been
contaminated in this consumers home. So
we continued to look. One, the supplier
to the grocery store was able to find some product in an intact package from
the same production lot, and test of that product showed that it in fact was
also contaminated. So, we knew the
source. With that, we were able to work
with the plant, and the plant has initiated a recall of this product. And that’s going on right now. So, our effort now, is to make sure that
consumers who may have this product in their home, and because the product is
boxes of frozen patties, it’s likely that it’s still in peoples homes. Because people have put it in their freezer,
they may be pulling it out to use this 4th of July weekend to use on the
grill. So, we’re, our interest right
now, the plants interest is to get the product back. Our interest is to make sure that household consumers check their
refrigerator, see if they have any of this product, and if so, they don’t use
it. Ideally, they take it back, but as
long as they don’t use it, that’s our interest. So, our effort is really to make sure that consumers are
informed. That they know what the
problem is, to the extent that we know it.
What the source is, and, therefore, what they can do about it. So, if
we, for example, are not able to find a source, which in food borne illness is
frequently the case, then we’re not able to do this kind of alert to
consumers. And that’s why I mentioned
in remarks that one of the things that we’re involved in is looking at
outbreaks of food borne illness, so we can find out if there is something that
be done, if we can get the product back, if there’s something wrong with
it. Ideally, we prevent this from
happening in the first place. And,
that’s what our new system of HAZOP is about, to make sure that product doesn’t
get out there that’s got this problem in it.
But, when it does, so we that we can make sure consumers know what to do
about it.
Yes?
Q ...National Farm Regime
I noticed in the publication that you put out, and I appreciate them, they’re
very informative, that you said that the USDA ... more than 137 million
livestock and almost 8 million birds every year.
MRS. GLAVIN: Billion birds.
Q ...billion. How many are there total?
MRS. GLAVIN: No, no. That’s it.
We inspect every single one of them.
Yes?
Q In terms of our overall
US production, what is the percent?
MRS. GLAVIN: It’s virtually everything. Anything that is an interstate commerce is inspected by a federal
inspector. There are roughly 25 states
that have state programs that are comparable to the federal one, and so they
inspect, in those states, the state inspects product that is only sold within
the state. In state’s that don’t have a
state program, everything’s inspected by a federal inspector. But, all meat and poultry in this country is
inspected.
Yes?
Q As a meat producer who
is also involved in looking closely at what’s happening in packing plant
operations, I find a change right now from the old system to the new HAZOP
system confusing, and for example, was recently at a conference where an
individual representing the American Meat Institute stood up and said we know
have an inspection program ... meat inspectors will no longer be inspecting
carcasses instead they will be inspecting paper.
MRS. GLAVIN: Well ...
Q Could you explain the
hazard program in more detail?
MRS. GLAVIN: I would be glad to.
Yes. Because you have heard from
someone who is very misinformed.
The question was to explain what the HAZOP system really does.
Q Would you give the
acronym?
MRS. GLAVIN: Yes, thank
you.
That’s, we’re terrible in Washington, we only use acronyms and we
assume everyone knows them. HAZOP
stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points. And that’s really the story. The plant is required to have a HAZOP plan,
which means, first of all, they must analyze their process. If their process is slaughter, that’s what
they analyze. If their process is
making hamburgers, that’s what they analyze.
They analyze that process to identify all of the potential hazards that
could occur in their process. These are
food safety hazards, these aren’t quality.
These are food safety hazards.
And they have to identify their hazards, and for those hazards that they
determine are reasonably likely to occur they must identify critical control
points. The CCP of HAZOP. And the critical control points are those
points in the process where a problem can happen and where you can intervene to
prevent that problem. So a critical
control point might be for a cooked product, a temperature, a time and
temperature. If you’re making a sausage
that you have a time and temperature critical control point. In slaughter it might be your dressing
procedures. It might be your hide
removal. So each plant decides their
own critical control points. They then
must monitor, they must have a system of monitoring those critical control
points on an ongoing basis. So,
wherever they’ve identified a critical point, they have to monitor it and make
sure that if for example, the critical control point is, as I mentioned a time
temperature one, because that’s an easy one to illustrate, they have to make
sure that at that point the product reaches the proper temperature for the
proper amount of time. They have to
record all of this. They also have to,
when they’ve done all of this, before they ship the product, they have to
review and make sure that all of this was done. That the critical control points were monitored, somebody didn’t
forget to monitor it in this shift, and that they were met. Or if something had gone wrong, that it was
appropriately corrected, and taken care of for that product. So, so there’s another fail safe at the
end. It can’t be shipped until they’ve
made sure not only do we have this wonderful system, but you know, because Mary
Lou fell down and went to the infirmary, and it didn’t happen, something was
done to correct that problem. Because
obviously errors occur. So, that’s
that’s the HAZOP system that plants are required to have. Our inspection force will be moving, is
moving as we phase in this new program.
From the kind of work they did before, which was looking at everything
in the plant, and telling the plant management what was wrong and how to
correct it and exactly what to do, the plant now has it’s own plan. They’re responsible for doing this. They have a plan, they have a system. So our inspectors will be responsible for
monitoring and verifying that the plant is carrying out its
responsibilities. It will be making
sure that the critical control points are monitored. Our inspectors will do some actual monitoring themselves of those
critical control points, and see that they correlate with the plants
monitoring. Our inspectors will be
looking at both the plants doing this kind of work and at the records to show
that they are doing it consistently, and regularly and appropriately. So, when this persons saying that all our
people do is look at paperwork, that’s not what’s going on. What’s going on is we’re providing standards
for the plant to meet, telling them they have to design this system for how to
meet it. They then have to meet
whatever they design. They have to do
whatever they design, and our people are there to make sure that that happens. When it doesn’t happen, the product doesn’t
get shipped.
Q So, in other words
they’re no long inspecting carcasses?
MRS. GLAVIN: Oh, yes, they are.
Yes.
Q Inaudible.
MRS. GLAVIN: Right. And this is
getting a little technical, but we look not only at the entire plant, in
slaughter plants we also, as I think you asked, we also look at every single
carcass. We look at animals before
they’re slaughtered and we also do what we call post mortem inspection, which
means the carcass. And, that is still
going on. And so our inspectors are
still doing that while the inspectors who are responsible for the broader plant
responsibilities are now looking at the plant systems. And, I think I’m being moved out of my time.
MEDIATOR: Well, what I’m trying to do is to reserve some time at the
end for overall discussion. So, please
do stay, because the speakers will stay and we will have a more open discussion
than what we can do now.
I do want to move the program along, though, because the next speaker
is also going to be talking about an area in which there is some very exciting
change going on, as well. As Mrs.
Glavin indicated in her remarks, our system of food safety regulation here in
the United States is a shared responsibility.
Federal and state. And within
the federal government there are two agencies that have regulatory
responsibilities. You’ve heard about
the meat, poultry and egg products regulatory responsibilities of the food
safety inspection service. All other
products, including eggs that are in the shell, are regulated by the Food and
Drug Administration. Our next speaker
is Michelle Smith and Dr. Smith is a senior scientist in food technologist with
the Food and Drug Administration. And
she has most recently been involved, and has actually been one of the principle
drafters of new guidance material that the Food and Drug Administration has
developed to minimize microbial food safety hazards for fresh fruits and
vegetables. The development of this
guidance came as a result of a directive from President Clinton in October, to
develop a new program to further assure the safety of produce, fresh fruits and
vegetable available here within the United States. So, Dr. Smith is going to
describe the voluntary guidance document that the Food and Drug Administration
has developed. How it was developed and
how it fits into this larger presidential initiative in food safety.
DR. SMITH: Good afternoon, and it’s a pleasure to be here. It’s been really exciting to be in the food
safety area, and I’m very glad to see a number of people here who are obviously
very interested in this topic.
My involvement has been primarily in drafting a guidance document which
we released recently for public comment.
April 13th we released a proposed version of the guide to minimize
microbial food safety hazards for fresh fruits and vegetables. Yesterday was the close of the comment
period, so if that’s a critic, he can’t get in any more.
What the guide does, is it covers very general good agricultural and
good manufacturing practices, most likely to reduce the risk of microbial food
safety hazards. This guide is part of
the larger food safety initiative which the President announced early in
1997. There are a number of elements in
the larger food safety initiative, as you can see here. The goal of the food safety initiative is to
reduce to the extent possible, to the greatest extent possible, the incidence
of food borne outbreaks. While the food
safety initiative, the larger initiative covers every step in the continuum
between the farm and the table.
Recently, at a number of public meetings, we had, there was an
international meeting in Washington, D.C., where we were looking for comment on
this guidance document. And there were
a number of terms in different countries that they use in their food safety
programs instead of farm to table. One
was plow to platter. Did the Australian
person leave? That may have been
Australia. But that that was just kind
of an interesting thing that we learn as we go along. The very beginning of this continuum, the farm level, is an area
where if there was specific problem and it was traced back to a farm, FDA would
certainly get involved if this was a product that we have authority over. But it’s not some place where we’ve spent a
whole lot of time. While our lives
changed in October, when the President announced the produce and imported food
safety initiative as part of this initiative he charged FDA to work in
cooperation while he charged the Secretary of Health and Human Services in
cooperation with the Secretary of Agriculture and in conjunction and
cooperation with the agricultural community, to develop guidance for good
agricultural practices. Some practices
at the very beginning of this continuum, to minimize microbial food safety
hazards for fresh produce. One of the
questions that we’ve heard a lot is why produce and why now. The incidence of food borne inspection
linked to produce is relatively low compared to a lot of other classes, larger
classes of food items. But CDC has
brought it to our attention that this incidence was increasing. And there may be a number of reasons for
this. First of all, many public health
officials are encouraging people to increase their consumption of fresh fruits
and vegetables for health reasons.
Obviously, consumers have gotten this message. Consumption has increased.
We don’t want anything that we do to have a negative impact on the
increase consumption of fresh produce.
A lot of issues that have come up at public meetings have dealt with
things like, be careful how you present your efforts to minimize microbial food
safety hazards in produce, because we don’t want people to be afraid of eating
strawberries or green salads. Other
factors that may have contributed to this increase are things like changing distribution
patterns. You know have produce from
world wide sources available year round.
In addition, you have new products being introduced because of consumers
desire for convenience type items, things like fresh cut salads. We’re running into new pathogens. And a lot of new challenges. And, so, in a nutshell, those are the
reasons why we’re looking at produce.
Not to single out produce, but to address another piece of the puzzle
that we haven’t been as active in that area in the past as some of the other
areas.
Now, a couple words about the guidance document itself. This proposed guidance document, and I
brought some copies with me, if anyone is interested and they haven’t seen it,
but they would like a little lite reading.
If you are traveling and you don’t want to carry too much heavy stuff
back home with you, I also have some copies of the notice of availability for
the document which has a web address where you can retrieve the document, not
just this one, but shortly comments that we’ve received on this document should
be posted on the web, also. Along with
a number of other initiatives that we’re involved in. The guidance document is a very broad scope document. It’s intended to apply to fresh produce
meaning fruits and vegetables that do not receive some kind of lethal treatment
that would kill micro organisms or pathogens on that produce. It’s intended to apply across all regions in
the United States and in other countries of the world. Because of this very broad nature our
recommendations have had to be very general, in there nature, and in using this
document to be most effective the people that are concerned with these issues,
whether they’re growers, operators, packers, or at any stage along there, would
need to take a look at these recommendations and figure out how best to apply
them to there own operations. The
guidance document in voluntary. It does
not impose any requirements on anyway.
So, this is a different kind, and I hate to say a different model for
regulating because since it’s voluntary guidance, it’s not a regulation. But it’s something that we’re trying to put
information out there to help raise awareness and promote adoption of good
practices. The guide focuses also on
risk reduction, want necessarily elimination because I don’t know if the
sciences is there yet. There are a
number of things that we don’t know.
We have, however, identified a number of areas of potential concern,
both in the agricultural environment and in the packing house. And these areas are water, water that may be
used for things like irrigation, water also that might be used to wash produce
before it goes to market. The use of
manure or municipal sewage sludge is also a potential source of contamination
depending on how it’s treated and how it’s handled. In this category also, you have the potential for wild animals or
some uncontrolled introduction of pathogens into the growing or packing
environment.
A significant area of concern is worker health and hygiene. Also, the sanitation of all of the equipment
that comes in contact with the produce.
The facility sanitation, and finally transportation. many products could make it through the
entire process and be very well cared for and then be loaded onto a truck that
had previously carried cargo that could be a source of contamination. Unless someone is responsible for ensuring
that the truck is in proper condition, then all your efforts before hand have
really been hurt.
As I said before, the guide is intended as guidance only. Our goal with this document is to increase
awareness of the potential sources of contamination for the field to the
packing house, and to provide suggestions for practices that are most likely to
minimize those potential hazards. We’ve
worked very closely with a lot of technical experts in many different federal
agencies on this document. We made a
working draft available to the public last year, in November, and we brought in
a number of people from State Departments of Public Health and Agriculture to
take a look at comments that we received at that first go around. Because this is guidance, it’s very very
important that we have the buy in of the user community and we have as much
input as possible from all the different perspectives that are involved. This is a real exciting thing to be part of
because of some many partnerships involved.
And, I really enjoyed the opportunity to work with a lot of the people
that have been part of this.
Now, the document itself starts with a section that has principles that
are common to successful food safety operations. Two of these principles are prevention of microbial contamination
as preferred over corrective actions.
Once contamination has occurred, and starting at the very beginning of
this food chain, gives you a really super opportunity to play a role in the
prevention part of that. Another
principle that kind of echoes the previous presentation, is that it’s really
important to establish a system of accountability at all levels of the
agricultural environment. If there are
people or equipment or other systems that you have in place as part of your
food safety program, there needs to be some kind of way to make sure that
everything is functioning the way that it ought to.
Now, just for illustration purposes, I’ve brought a couple slides of
specific recommendations that we make in two of these areas
Tape ended.
... on site visits there were varying levels of grower/packer
willingness to assume the responsibility for this function. It’s not an easy area, but it’s a really
important area. People need to be aware
of food safety concerns. They need to
be aware of the importance of proper hand washing, when you’re handling produce,
that’s not just a commodity, that’s a food item. A number of people recently were saying, well, everyone picks
stuff up in the supermarket. Well, and
they didn’t necessarily wash their hands, I think that even though packing
houses are specifically exempt from some of the good manufacturing practices
that we have in our code of federal regulations for food processing plants, the
awareness level at the packing house needs to get just a little bit more formal
in recognizing that that is food that they’re working with. That’s my personal opinion. With respect to toilet facilities, they need
to be easily accessible. People need to
be able to use them when they need to use them instead of using the field or a
ditch next to the field, etcetera. They
also need to be in good enough shape and well enough maintained so that people want
to use them.
We have just ended our comment period on this proposed guide
yesterday. While we were waiting for
the comments to come in, we had a number of public meetings and international
meeting in Washington, D.C.. I know
we’re getting comments from the international community and also domestic
consumers and the domestic produce industry.
We will be working on this document, brining it up to date based on
those comments through July and August, and we hope to have a final guide
available by October 1st. That’s a
presidential deadline. So, I don’t know
that it can slide. Following making the
final guidance document available, the next step will be to take the
information in this document and put it in a form that is useful and meaningful
to the people that need this information.
On a domestic level, FDA is working extensively with USDA, CSRES, which
is the lead agency as far as the education outreach aspect of this initiative
goes. We also have established an
interagency international work group to look into different mechanisms for
outreach and technical assistance on an international level. A lot of what we’re able to do there will
depend on what kinds of resources we get in upcoming budgets.
And just a couple of shots of places we’ve been and things that we’ve
seen.
One more.
Okay.
Thank you. Does any one have
any questions? Anything that I can
address at this point? I’m also going
to leave copies of both the guidance document and the notice of availability on
the back table for people to feel free to pick up. I see one.
Q Inaudible.
DR. SMITH: Okay.
Q and I personally know
that the American producer really cares about the health of the American
consumer, or whoever consumes our product.
I’ve been really upset about the adverse publicity that we’ve
received. I don’t think we deserve
it. Especially, I remember the first
reading about the ecoli that has caused illness, I believe Oregon. Then later finding out that the ecoli had
been found in imported meat. Now, I
never saw any headlines that said, hey, America, producers were blameless. It was left as it was, and of course it was
only after big beef investigators that we found where the source lay. Does ecoli exist in a ribbon animal?
DR. SMITH: Yes.
Q Then, can it be
ascertained before that animal is slaughtered that it is a carrier of this
bacteria, would that be a, I mean, if I let something like that, I would send
it to Alpo, why can this not be an additional safety net? No one wants to sell diseased beef for human
consumption. Actually --
DR. SMITH: It might even be a problem for Alpo.
Q Well, the main concern
is disease.
DR. SMITH: Well, I think you make a couple of very important
points. One is that the problems that
we have disease causing micro organisms in foods are world wide problems. It’s not just a US problem, it’s just not a
problem in any single locality, but rather these are problems that we all
share. And I think the second very
important point that you make is that there’s a whole lot that we don’t know
about these organisms. One thing that
has been undertaken here in the United States is at the request of the beef, or
actually at the request of the Governor of Nebraska, he asked that Chuck
Shroeder, the President of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, establish
a beef industry food safety council.
And they have just in the last month or so completed a review of ecoli
O157H7, and recommended a research program that would help to answer some of
the questions that you’re raising about how wide spread is this within live
animals, can we develop means that for intervening early to prevent
colonization of livestock with this organism.
And there are various promising areas of research that look like they
might be able to develop some interventions that can be used on the farm. So, I think you are making two very
important points.
Yes, there’s a question at the back.
Q Inaudible.
DR. SMITH: Well, I let me take a stab at paraphrasing your question and
then responding to it.
Your question is what is the Department of Agriculture doing to help
the industry face this problem of specifically ecoli O157H7, but perhaps more
generally food borne illnesses.
Q Inaudible.
DR. SMITH: Well, I think we’re doing a number of things with respect to
providing information to consumers about food safety related problems and
things that they can do to protect themselves and to minimize the potential for
acquiring a food borne illness, and Mrs. Glavin referred to some of the
activities that the Food Safety Inspection Service, with a partnership that is
quite broad that involves private
sector organizations, many of the meat, organizations that represent producers
as well as processors, are part of this partnership. So, the development of the educational messages is a major
activity that has been undertaken in a public/private partnership.
Q Inaudible.
DR. SMITH: Well, I, if you are characterizing the current ongoing
situation that Mrs. Glavin described, I think you’ve mischaracterized it,
because --
Q Inaudible.
DR. SMITH: Okay. Well, what you
described was not the current situation.
Our primary emphasis is on protecting the public health from the
regulatory perspective, and from that perspective we are providing information
to consumers about general practices that they can undertake to protect
themselves, which is what we’ve described.
And in the specific instances where we know that there is, that there
are illnesses and we have made epimeiological links between illnesses and food
products. We request that the company
that was responsible for producing and marketing that product recall that product.
Pardon?
Q Inaudible.
DR. SMITH: Well, take the, take the current situation as a case in
point. The information that was provided to the news media, yesterday, by
the Department of Agriculture, indicated that we had initiated, or that the
company had initiated a voluntary recall at our request, that the product had
been distributed in 24 different states, it provided very specific information
about the description of the product, the lot numbers that were involved, and
that is the norm for our recalls. We
provide very specific information to the consumer so that they can act on
it. And that is really the essence of
the communication that we are providing in a recall situation. Proving accurate information that consumers
can act on to protect themselves. I
think to kind of get us back on to track, for the rest of the session. That our final speaker is going to be
addressing some of your concerns as well, and I would like to provide her the
opportunity to at least make some prepared remarks, and then we’ll open up the
floor again for everybody.
The final speaker in our session is Lisa Christianson, who’s the
Director of Education in Consumer Affairs for the National Farmers Union. And she’s going to be talking, I expect,
about the realities of the situation, and as you can tell, there’s an enormous
amount of interest from this audience in the producers perspective. So, if you could kick off this discussion,
then we’ll open it up again for broad comment.
LISA CHRISTIANSON: Thank you.
And, and that’s a very easy thing for me to do. I’m very honored to be here, up here with
you, and I think that the USDA does a wonderful job in terms of providing
regulations and developing systems for food safety. Although we’re facing a situation currently in the global economy
that we live in today, where food borne illness is a reality and millions of
people in this country alone are, get sick every year. And thousands of people die. And, so, it’s important to stay vigilant and
voluntary programs are a positive step, but required regulation is something
that we of course look for in the future into make sure that producers in our
country and in other countries are meeting standards that do protect consumers. And, we, as a national organization, work on
food safety and environmental issues specifically for those reasons. Because our American producers are required
to meet a tremendous amount of regulations, regulatory guidelines that other
countries don’t necessarily have to meet, and yet they’re competing in that
market place. And, we feel very
strongly that labeling is important, and we also feel very strongly that the
American consumer market as well as other consumer markets all over the world
are entitled to a safe food supply. And,
so we talk an awful lot about processing in an environmentally sound ways, we
visit with people about the differences between family farm agriculture and
corporate farming operations. We
certainly need to strengthen regulations even in this country, in terms of
livestock production in in corporate situations, high concentration of
livestock animals. I’m sure you’ve been
all over, I mean those are the kinds of things we’re facing here. I think when you look at it from a global
perspective, there even needs to be more discussion and vigilance and
commitment by producers, consumers, and governments to provide safe food to the
peoples of the world. And that can only
be done by governments through regulations because agribusiness is not going to
do that. I mean, they exist to make
profits. And, you know, governments are
to be the voice of the people, and to be responsive to the needs of the people. And, we as a producer group working with
consumers when these kinds of things happen, we all suffer. It’s not just when the information gets
tracked down to whatever the source is, it’s not just that producer, it can be
all the producers of that particular commodity that get a black eye from these
situations. You know, when we had the
raspberry scare, well, then, you know, I know a whole bunch of people that just
stopped buying fresh fruit. Because they were simply afraid of what they were
facing. And so, we need not only to
educate ourselves, but we need to have the scientific research conducted so
that we know how to deal with these problems.
I mean, I was just, the most recent report I read, last week, was
talking about food borne illnesses in fruit and vegetables, now, that we don’t
have antibiotics for. You know. And so then that becomes very dangerous. You know, if we don’t know how to fix these
kinds of things, and I think that we know, we know that in other countries that
do not have the same standards as we do, particularly when they’re producing
fruit and vegetables, the water supplies aren’t clean. That seems to be one of the, you know, you
talked about the water, well the water those vegetables are with that water, it
contaminates all that fruit. And so,
even if we had food, a stronger food safety regulations in this country that
would assist other countries if they want to have access to the American
consumer market. It would assist in
raising there standards, because they’re probably not going to not want access
to the American consumer market. I
mean, that is our thinking as a as a general rule or to the other markets of
the world. But, right now, the trade
agreements don’t have those kinds of things in place in the agricultural
product sector. And we feel very
strongly those kinds of things need to be re- to be addressed and work with Kodaks
is something that as we, move forward in this global arena in the global market
place that needs to be addressed.
So. With that I think I’m going
to turn it back over to you, and open it up for questions. And, I’m seeing a lot of heads nod, and there
might be people in the audience that want to share some stories, some more
stories.
Q Inaudible.
MEDIATOR: Sally, could you come up here and use this microphone. What we’re going to try to do, is make sure
that everybody is heard.
Q My, I guess question,
and what I’d like you to comment on is that as we know as scientist that ecoli
exists in the animal and a lot of it seems that the beef industry does get
blamed for it. But, how do you think you’ll fight that. Mr. Bac is going to fit into this. Because I think that’s an important
instrument in educating consumers. To
let them know that it’s not all the producer.
A Well, Mr. Bac fits right
in. Because if, if in fact, there is a
failure and a piece of meat with a 157 on it, gets into your kitchen, the first
thing Mr. Bac says is to wash your hands after you’ve touched that, both before
and after you’ve touched that meat so that you’re protecting yourself. The second thing he says is to be careful
that you don’t cross-contaminate. So,
you don’t put your salad that you’re not going to cook on the same counter as
you put the meat that you are going to cook.
And the third thing Mr. Bac says is to cook properly. Meat that is cooked properly will not make
you sick from 0157. 0157 is able to be
destroyed by proper cooking. And then,
the fourth thing is the refrigeration, which doesn’t directly deal with the
0157. So, if you get a contamination in
your kitchen, you can protect yourself by making sure it doesn’t spread to
other foods that aren’t, going to be eaten raw perhaps, or lightly cooked. And that the product that it came in on is
cooked properly. So, you won’t get sick
in those cases.
Q I just want to direct a
quick question to her. How do you know
that you have contaminated meat?
A Unfortunately, you
don’t. You can’t see it. It looks fine. It doesn’t smell bad.
It’s it’s just looks perfectly good.
And so, the instructions that or the education we give to consumers is
to assume that you have contaminated product, and treat everything carefully
and cook it well. At the same time,
we’re working on the other end to try to lessen the chance that you are getting
product that has contamination on it by the work we’re doing in the plants, and
as Dr. Rotecki mentioned, there’s research going on, both by the industry and
by the Department of Agriculture to see if we can stop the source of
contamination in the living animals so that it doesn’t ever come into the meat
plant.
Q Okay. I guess one of my major questions is just
about what you mentioned about the contamination of meat. How it doesn’t look any different than
uncontaminated meat, and really what the roll of inspectors in HAZOP because my
understanding is that the two ways to kill ecoli are proper cooking, which is
consumer education, and I was also kind of wanted aside from that, wanted to
know if you mentioned this in your press releases whenever you send out, you
know, the accurate information, if you
go ahead and tell it, the consumers right then what they need to do inside
their kitchen. Okay. And then the other way that your radiation
of meat is another way to kill it, and that’s not part of really the HAZOP
system yet, is it?
A Well. No.
An inspector can’t see microveal contamination on meat. And that’s why we’re changing how we
regulate meat. First of all, by
requiring the plants to have these systems in place so that meat does not
become contaminated in the first place.
That’s coupled with microbial testing that goes on in plants to assure
that, in fact, that’s happening and being successful. And your last question was the radiation. Yes.
The Food and Drug Administration last winter approved the radiation of
meat and we are in the process of doing regulations to make that
available. We expect to have a proposal
out this summer to make a radiation available to the red meat industry. And, then it will be a decision of the
industry where and when to use it. When
it’s most appropriate. It’s not a
silver bullet. But it is another tool
that will soon be available.
Q Inaudible.
A Okay. The question was the plant that produce the
product in the current recall, did it have a HAZOP system in place. And the answer is no. It was a plant, actually the plant was in
Europe, but I don’t remember where it was.
AUDIENCE: California.
A California, thank you.
MODERATOR: I’ve never got to moderate like this before. This is -- come on down.
Q My name is Sandra
LaBlanc, and I’m Communications Director for the National Catholic World Life
Conference, and for safety, for security is a major concern of our
organization. I’m sorry I missed the
very first part of the first presentation.
You’re not addressing salmonella or physteria. I just got back from the --
AUDIENCE: Inaudible.
-- do you want to? Let’s get
really disgusting. I mean ecoli, if you
use safe food handling procedures, you can really protect yourself quite well
from that. Salmonella and physteria are
two really nasty things. My father
right now is 77 years old, he’s been in the hospital for a week, a week before
that he’s been terribly ill with salmonella.
And we almost lost him. They
think they’ve traced it to fried chicken that he bought in a grocery
store. And grocery stores, I think are
a major concern in terms of salmonella preparation, food preparation and
serving. There’s no plastic gloves that
are used. They might slice ham to your
raw chicken, and package that up, and then they go run right over and slice
your ham that you don’t cook. So cross
contamination is a problem. I just got
back from New Orleans, and every restaurant I went into said our mussels are
pasteurized. You know, so physteria is
a major problem. And these things crop
up on you and you can become, I mean, children and elderly people can flat out
die from them. So, also, the use of
chicken manure, both as livestock feed, as, there was a serious case of an
outbreak with unpasteurized apple juice in Washington state, I believe. I mean, those three things, I guess, I would
like you to address.
MEDIATOR: Okay. Do you want to start on salmonella, and then
you can talk about some of the shellfish and seafood related problems?
A We’ve sort of focused on
ecoli 0157 because the initial questions had to do with beef and one and beef
tends to be a source of 0157.
Obviously, the other pathogens, food borne pathogens are of great
concern. Salmonella is of great
concern. We have a salmonella
performance standard in our poultry plants now, which requires the poultry
plants to reduce the incidence of salmonella in their plants. Campholavactor is also an enormous concern,
and is probably the leading cause of food borne disease, today. At least leading cause of reported food
borne disease today. So, we’re
interested in all of those. And, the
HAZOP systems is intended to address all of those. It’s, remember I said that you had to identify hazards that are
reasonably likely to occur in your plant.
So, for a poultry producer, the poultry producer probably wouldn’t worry
about ecoli 015787. We don’t think it
occurs in poultry. But, would worry
about salmonella and Campholavactor, which occur quite a bit in poultry. So, they would have systems in place. They would have to design and put systems in
place to deal with those. And the safe
handling practices work for all of the above.
The don’t cross contaminate, as you explained was happening in the
grocery store, the cooking properly, all of the pathogens we’ve talked about so
far are quite susceptible to cooking.
Now, there are some pathogens that aren’t. But, the ones we’ve been talking about are susceptible to
cooking.
MEDIATOR: Okay. Dr. Smith,
shellfish, fish and food safety problems and is physteria one of them?
DR. SMITH: Okay. You’re
starting to step a little bit outside of my area. But, FDA is concerned about any pathogen of human health
significance. We have a number of
people in our office of seafood, who are specifically looking at seafood
safety. We do have HAZOP requirements
for the seafood industry. A number of
people in the seafood area and also in other food areas are concerned about
physteria. We have, in the works right
now, regulations governing juice, whether it’s pasteurized or not, and labeling
requirements to alert consumers to the safety concerns of unpasteurized juice
products, so that they can make those kinds of purchasing decisions
themselves. In the retail area, which
can be a significant source of contamination or cross contamination, we have a
number of programs that are very active and one of the things that is happening
right now, is that is an area where we are expanding our resources. We’re getting some dollars to send more
inspectors out there to see how things are done. The last point about gloves.
Gloves are very much a useful tool in reducing cross contamination, but
you have to careful that they’re not themselves a source of contamination.
A I might just add of
footnote. On the physteria issue, my
understanding is that, first of all our knowledge that this organism is
extremely limited. It’s one of these
emerging pathogens. The cases of
illness that have been linked to physteria, has been from aerostilized
water. You know, people who are working
around the water. To date, to my
knowledge, there haven’t been any cases that has been linked to eating
fish. So, there, it’s one of these new
organisms that’s emerging and it’s one that is going to require a lot more
careful examination.
Lisa, you wanted to add something.
LISA: Well, I just think that, you know, when you talk about the
physteria we should look at what is caused that. And what is caused that is then another challenge in terms of
looking at regulating in an environmentally sound way. Swine operations. North Carolina, you know, there are 11 million hogs in a
particular area. Because of those lagoon
spills, into the rivers and excess of nitrates being dumped into the
rivers. That has, what has activated
this micro organism, and, you know, we know very little about that. And so, we get back to some basics in terms
of how do we process food in an environmentally sound way, and then how do we
deal with these problems. And if we’re
going to have accountability in agriculture, we need to have it across the,
every single line. And there has to be
accountability throughout, in the trade agreements, in family farming, and
corporate farming. We need to have
regulations in place, that are in the best interest of people living on the
land and everywhere, or we’re going to continually face these kinds of
challenges.
Q Inaudible.
MEDIATOR: We were asked to use the microphone because they’re recording
the session. So --
Q As to physteria, it’s my
understanding that they, it’s not only the nitrates, but it’s also the
phosphorous. And that the Natural
Resources Conservation Service is looking into standards for phosphorous. And, further, the scientific, there’s not
yet scientific proof that nutrients are, there’s not 100% proof, that nutrients
are the real problem with physteria.
MEDIATOR: Thank you.
Yes.
Q My husband and I raise
the only fat-free beef in the whole world.
He spent 33 years of his life selectively breeding to create an animal
that can be raised organically, and would be fat-free. My question is, okay, I’ve told you. Why aren’t you excited? If I told you that since I’ve been here, I came
here Saturday, my husband went out, he raped 14 women and killed their
husbands, would you get excited? I
would. I’d be on my way. But seriously, why isn’t good news
exciting? Let’s spread the good
news. American agricultural producers
are doing a wonderful job. If you think
that my integrity is for sale for the price of one or two animals, then you
don’t know people in the American agricultural community. We fight a good fight. We’re independent, and stubborn as could be,
and we are determined, we are determined.
You think it’s easy to raise animals or anything else for that
matter? We’re at 8,000 feet to 10,000
feet, we get 7 whole inches of rainfall a year. And still we persist because we are committed. As we’ve often said, this is our
legacy. Not only to our children, but
to the world’s children. That it can be
done and it can be done right and it can be done well. I think maybe USDA should start spreading
the good news. Spread the good
news. The American producer cares. He does his very best to give the American
consumers, or whoever, the very best
that he can produce. Come on, now!
We’re good people. We deserve a
hand. We deserve a pat on the
back. And we deserve recognition. Give it to us!
MEDIATOR: Thank you. I can’t
think of better note to end this session on.
Thank you all for a very stimulating afternoons discussion. And I think we need to also give our
producers the recognition that they deserve.
The final word. Okay. You’ve got to be on the tape.
AUDIENCE: One little tiny thing was that for Dr. Smith, I was going to
ask you about that, we found out for a fact that these organisms listed in
salmonella and others that have been isolated from beef are also in vegetables. So, could you comment on that, it’s been
isolated like in lettuce and some other things, could you comment on that,
please?
DR. SMITH: Okay. As I mentioned
earlier, we’ve identified a number of areas of concern as far as sources of
contamination. Most food borne
pathogens are from either human or animal fecal matter. Either directly or indirectly, such as,
carried in the water supply. So, any
pathogen that could be in an animal could also potentially be transmitted to
fresh produce, depending on the way it’s grown and the way it’s handled past
production. One of the things that I
didn’t mention earlier, we’re doing a guidance document because the science
base is not there right now for regulations.
We don’t know about pathogen survival in the field environment, but
we’ve also accelerated research programs at a number of different agencies to
help find those answers. So, that’s, we’re working on it.
MEDIATOR: Well, please join me
in thanking the speakers and also recognizing all of your participation. Thanks so much.