A new food safety precaution will go into effect next month. According to a USDA news release, USDA will begin listing those retail stores that have received meat products that have been listed as Class I recalls.

Class I recalls are those recalls that pose the most serious threat to public health. In Class I recalls, the recall “is one that involves a reasonable probability of serious health consequences or death for those with weakened immune systems,” according to the USDA.

According to the USDA press release, "The identity of retail stores with recalled meat and poultry from their suppliers has always been a missing piece of information for the public during a recall," said Schafer. "People want to know if they need to be on the lookout for recalled meat and poultry from their local store and by providing lists of retail outlets during recalls, USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service will improve public health protection by better informing consumers."

In the future, after a Class I recall is issued, “USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) will post on its Web site a list of retail stores that receive products subject to Class I recalls, the highest risk category, generally within three to ten business days of issuing the recall release.”

Once this information is made available, the USDA hopes that consumers will use the information from this list and discard any products in their possession that may be contaminated.

While the USDA will be posting recalls for retail centers which includes businesses such as supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience stores and meat markets, this list will not include restaurants or other institutions where food is prepared for direct consumption.

We have been calling on the USDA to take this action and welcome the additional information provided for consumers. However, we regret that restaurants and other institutions will not be listed. We feel that consumers need to know if they have been exposed to potentially-contaminated food.

Labels: food processing regulation, food safety consumer confidence, FSIS

Fred Pritzker, founder and president of national food safety law firm Pritzker Olsen Attorneys, has cast a critical eye on the results of a report produced by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infections Program. While the report's central message is that we as a society aren't getting any better at controlling food poisoning, Pritzker found data that suggests the problem runs deeper. Here is his report:

The Federal government’s Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) recently released preliminary data about the frequency of certain foodborne illnesses in 10 monitoring states for the year 2008. This is the equivalent of the government’s report card for food safety. The scores, as they say, leave much room for improvement.

The “take away” point from this data is that “progress toward the national health objectives [for foodborne pathogens] has plateaued, suggesting that fundamental problems with bacterial and parasitic contamination are not being resolved.”

My comment [and their goal] is simply: “No Shit.”

Stripped of its “journal speak,” the data shows that after making progress for a few years, efforts to safeguard our food have gone nowhere.

"The lack of recent progress toward the national health objective targets and the occurrence of large multistate outbreaks points to gaps in the current food safety system and the need to continue to develop and evaluate food safety practices as food moves from the farm to the table."

A closer reading of the data actually points to more serious problems. For example, in just one year (from 2007 to 2008), test samples of ground beef yielding E. coli O157:H7 nearly doubled from 0.24% to 0.47%. This is really quite shocking.

It was also interesting to note that only 25.7% of E. coli O157:H7 infections and 7.4% of Salmonella cases are associated with outbreaks. In other words, in the vast majority of human illness associated with these two pathogens, the source is never identified.

In a way, this is even more shocking. It shows we’re still very inadequate when it comes to testing for and analyzing foodborne pathogens – in other words, what we don’t know will hurt us.

Labels: campylobacter lawsuit, clostridium botulinum,food poisoning lawyer, salmonella attorney