Food Cops Get More Ammo With Obama's New Food Safety Rules

WASHINGTON — The White House is trying to make Americans' food safer after recent recalls of popular products like peanut butter and cookie dough.

A food safety working group established by President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the government will try and boost the safety of some of the nation's most popular foods, announcing stricter rules for the production of eggs, poultry, beef, leafy greens, melons and tomatoes. The new standards are an effort to reduce instances of salmonella and E. coli contamination.

The group, headed by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, is also directing the Food and Drug Administration to help the food industry establish better tracing systems if there is an outbreak, so the origins of a disease can be quickly found. A new network to help the many agencies that regulate food safety communicate better will also be created.

Tougher standards, including stiffer penalties and increased inspections, are included in legislation approved by a House panel earlier this year.

The White House and Congress have turned their attention to the issue after a string of food safety breakdowns in recent years, from contaminated spinach in 2006 to salmonella in peppers and possibly tomatoes last year.

Earlier this year a massive salmonella outbreak in peanut products sickened hundreds, was suspected of causing nine deaths and led to one of the largest product recalls in U.S. history. In the past month, Nestle Toll House cookie dough and 380,000 pounds of beef produced by the JBS Swift Beef Co. of Greeley, Colo., have been recalled due illnesses caused by E. coli contamination.

In March, Obama said he would create a special advisory group to coordinate antiquated food safety laws and recommend ways to update them. The FDA does not have enough money or workers to conduct annual inspections at more than a fraction of the 150,000 food processing plants and warehouses in the country, Obama said.

Under the new rules:

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_Egg and poultry producers will have to follow new standards designed to reduce salmonella contamination, including increased testing and refrigeration for eggs.

_The Food Safety Inspection Service, the Agriculture Department agency that inspects meat, will increase sampling of ground beef ingredients in an effort to better find E. coli contamination.

_The FDA will recommend ways that producers of leafy greens, melons and tomatoes can reduce disease strains, and require stricter standards in those industries within two years.

_The FDA and the Agriculture Department will create new positions to better oversee food safety. The FDA said Tuesday that Mike Taylor, a food safety expert and George Washington University professor, will serve as a senior adviser to the commissioner.

Consumer groups said the new rules were good first steps as Congress considers even stricter measures.

"We still urgently need to overhaul our badly outdated laws so that FDA has the tools and funds they need to inspect, prevent and detect food contamination," said Erik D. Olson, director of food and consumer product safety at the Pew Charitable Trusts. "FDA must be able to strongly enforce against food companies that import contaminated foods or hide test results showing contamination."

Vice President Joe Biden, who joined Vilsack and Sebelius for the announcement, said the administration's efforts to prevent disease are an important new approach.

"The focus on prevention is to have a completely different emphasis than we've had in the past," Biden said. "In the past we've focused on better reactions to food safety problems when they occur."

The Agriculture Department inspects meat and poultry, and shares inspections of eggs with the FDA. The FDA inspects most other foods, but at least 15 government agencies are a part of the food safety system.

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On the Net:

Food and Drug Administration: http://www.fda.gov/

Agriculture Department: http://www.usda.gov/

President's Food Safety Working Group: http://www.foodsafetyworkinggroup.gov/

Comments

[Toby1]

Another way to protect people would be to ensure that every worker gets paid sick days. Think about every waiter/barista/cook who has gone to work sick. Traditionally food service workers are among some of the lowest paid and tend to not take off unpaid sick time when needed.

[ReesieKitty]

I think its interesting how some posters here have tried to turn the discussion into 'Obama going after personal choices' This is about food safety procedures, testing and regulation. Who wants to eat food that is raised, processed and sold in unsanitary, unhealthy conditions? I worked in the grocery and food industry for several years and held a state sanitary license- BELIEVE me, you want your food, processing plants, restaurants, and stores inspected. These rules are much more likely to affect major 'factory farm' producers than independent family farms, simply because they process so many more animals and keep them in much less sanitary conditions. The issue of people being obese because of their diets or being more unhealthy is important- but it is a totally different discussion from whether or not food safety measures need to be put in place and enforced. The US now lags behind many western country in these measures, because of policy changes in the past 8 years. It's past time to catch up.

[TigersEye]

Diets being more healthy is not necessarily a different topic, just additional commentary of questioning what we're eating. The debate of high fructose corn syrup and other harmful additives being "snuck" into our everyday food is a huge problem, this is just as important as reducing salmonella and E. Coli outbreaks. Both of these factors are equally capable of causing damage to the human body.

[TigersEye]

I'd like to see them take high fructose corn syrup off the market. It's in almost everything and has a history of contributing to diabetes, digestion problems and obesity:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/FDGS24VKMH1.DTL

http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2008/08/20/4274/the-dangers-of-high-fructose-corn-syrup/

[BannedNBoston]

Leave the family farms alone they have sold raw milk a better product and are expanding sales.
They also sell superior eggs too dont regulate them leave it to the states.

[alieninvader]

How do you define "family farm"? What about the family farms that are simply contractors for major food conglomerates? Unfortunately, your idea will leave legal loopholes the size of a Cargill herd of cattle.

[RightWingMarine]

this is more govt intrusion where it isn't needed. yes there have been some deaths and illness related to contaminated food, that does not mean that we need additional govt bureaucrats to become involved. There will always be some risk in everything we do and it would be counter-productive to attempt to reduce the level of risk to zero. We could end traffic fatalities tomorrow by mandating a national speed limit of 5 mph but we recognize that the cost would be too high. We, as a society, are willing to accept tens of thousands of deaths every year from auto wrecks in return for getting to travel at a high speed.

[alieninvader]

Are you promoting anarchy? Are you advocating getting rid of all laws and the police? If not, why should corporations be allowed to have a lawless existence and I am not?

[Bjarni]

Are you really only able to see the extremes?

Nowhere in the posters remarks did he promote lawlessness. Just becaues he's talking against government intervention doesn't mean he's promoting abandoning laws.
The problem is and has always been, when 1% of the industry is causing problems, government punishes 100% of the industry with strickter rules.

Corporations will never have a lawless existance, and can always be sued if they cause harm or if their products cause harm, what the laws you are promoting does is try to prevent things from happening. Prevent things that in many cases wouldn't happen anyways.

[Moshe]

Obama is absolutely right on this issue, and hopefully it's just a first step.

Having lax rules for food safety is not only dangerous, it's dumb.

There is a growing list of nations that are banning import of U.S. foods.

Cheney/Bush let the industry regulate itself, resulting in a never ending series of tainted food products, and ultimately lost sales as U.S. imports were banned.

There are some things government should stay out of, like the private lives of citizens.

But policing food safety is an absolutely necessary role for government, and when government fails at this, people die, and ultimnately the food industry is harmed as well, as most people don't want to play russian roulette at the supermarket with their families health.

[jsgaetano]

Thank goodness we are ditching the policies of E. Coli Conservatives.

Anyone with half a brain would know "industry self-regulation" will never work. If it did... why would people have even created laws?

[capitaldysfunction]

Cudos to jsgaetano. E. coli Conservitives. Even farmers got pooped on by the Bushies.

[geedeck]

This is actually the change I can believe in. Really glad to hear Obama is addressing the real world problems of Americans. Not being sarcastic even, we really need to be willing to acknowledge the times that more government is the answer.

Because less is literally killing us.

[Bjarni]

More people die from diabetes and high blood pressure than E-Coli or any other food illness.

Many people consider things such as High Fructose Corn Syrup to be a cause in our poor diet and leads to other illnesses such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

The reason why the market place started using HFCS as a sweetner for everything from soda to breakfast cereal is that it's cheaper for them to buy HFCS than regular sugar.

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/1998/11/16/sweet.deal.html
http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/index.php/2006/01/24/tariffs_and_subsidies_the_literal_cost_o

Now, we can all agree that HFCS is not healthy and probably is causing more cases of health problems than sugar would, so indirectly, by propping up Corn and taxing all imported sugar the government is raising healthcare costs due to more people needing treatment for problems related to poor diets.

Not all "Government" is the answer.

[alieninvader]

If the Government would do its job and protect the people instead of corporations, the corn subsidies wouldn't exist. We don't need less Government and we probably don't need more. We just need the right Government.

[TigersEye]

I had not yet read your post when I typed mine above. :)

[capitaldysfunction]

Another brilliant inference from an E. coli Conservative. Seventy percent of Republicans would vote for Sarah Palin for President (07-08-2009 poll). That says it all.