Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

"But Dr. David Kessler, the FDA commissioner under the elder George Bush and 
Bill Clinton, said the agency has the authority to require the industry to 
trace produce as it travels from "farm to table" but has lacked "the impetus" 
to do so."


Last updated July 9, 2008 8:47 p.m. PT
Law hamstrings ability to trace salmonella source
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/370205_fdafoodsupply10.html
By BINA VENKATARAMAN
THE NEW YORK TIMES

More than 1,000 people in 41 states and the District of Columbia have now 
been sickened in the nation's salmonella outbreak, in what officials said 
Wednesday was the largest food-borne outbreak in the past decade. And some 
food safety experts this week tied problems in tracing the source of the 
contamination to what they say are shortcomings in the Bioterrorism Act of 
2002.

Federal investigators have now linked at least some of the outbreak to fresh 
jalapenos, Dr. Robert Tauxe of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention said, though they have not ruled out tomatoes.

But officials have still not pinpointed the source of the contamination. Nor 
do they know the country or state where the tainted produce was grown, 
despite a rule issued by the Food and Drug Administration under the 
bioterrorism law that was intended to give federal officials a way to respond 
immediately to threats to the nation's food supply.

The rule requires importers, processors and distributors to keep track of 
where they buy produce and where it goes. A major hurdle facing investigators 
in this outbreak, however, is that processors frequently repack boxes of 
tomatoes to meet a buyer's demands. In doing so, officials said, they are not 
required to record the tomatoes' farm, state or even country of origin.

"The purpose of the recordkeeping provision of the Bioterrorism Act was to 
support going back to the origin of food after people have gotten sick when 
you are trying to find out how the biological agent got there," said Michael 
Taylor, a professor at George Washington University and a former FDA 
official. "But the provisions are of little or no value with respect to 
trace-backs of fresh produce because of the amount of shoe leather and time 
it would take."

The rule requires only that produce handlers keep track of food one step back 
and one step forward in the supply chain and does not apply to retailers or 
growers. Because the rule does not specify the format for records, 
investigators are sifting through a hodgepodge of paper trails to identify 
the source of the contaminated produce.

"It's clear that the FDA is not equipped to deal with a trace-back of the 
magnitude that they are dealing with right now," said Mike Doyle, director of 
the center for food safety at the University of Georgia.

Several lawmakers and consumer advocates are calling for a system that 
requires the industry to track the entire history of food products.

Dr. David Acheson, the agency's associate commissioner for foods, said in a 
telephone interview on Monday that the FDA lacked authority to require full 
trace-back capability.

But Dr. David Kessler, the FDA commissioner under the elder George Bush and 
Bill Clinton, said the agency has the authority to require the industry to 
trace produce as it travels from "farm to table" but has lacked "the impetus" 
to do so.