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Ärende: who's responsible for food?
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From the Baltimore Sun
Who's accountable for E. coli?


By Michael R. Taylor

October 13, 2006

If the president of the United States wanted his aides to tell him who is in
charge of preventing the next outbreak of illness from E. coli in spinach or
lettuce, the answer would be: no one.

It's not the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the
leader of the Food and Drug Administration, or the secretary of the Department
of Agriculture. It's not California's departments of Health Services or Food
and Agriculture. And it's not any one of the thousands of private-sector actors
who play some part in the production, processing and marketing of spinach,
lettuce and other fresh produce that are vulnerable to dangerous E. coli
contamination.

All play a role, but no one is in charge, and no one can fairly be held
accountable.

One institution can, however, be held responsible, at least for the fractured
state of play in the nation's food safety "system." That would be Congress.

Despite repeated calls by the Government Accountability Office and the National
Academy of Sciences to modernize the food safety laws and unify the food safety
agencies, Congress hasn't budged. And that failure to act has again had tragic
consequences.

The deadly form of E. coli that has sickened so many consumers who merely ate
spinach or lettuce lives naturally and harmlessly in the gut of cattle -
harmlessly, that is, until it is shed into a cow's manure and enters the food
supply. This occurs through contamination of beef during the slaughter process
or contamination of fresh fruits and vegetables as a result of manure infecting
water supplies, birds picking up the bacteria in one field and depositing it in
another, or any one of the many other ways bad bugs spread in the environment.
The risk of someone getting sick is determined by such contamination events and
by all the things that do or do not happen afterward to increase, reduce or
eliminate the bacteria before they reach the dinner plate. For spinach, lettuce
and other produce consumed raw, the only sure-fire protection is to prevent the
contamination in the first place, and that's where the system breaks down.

No one is in charge of leading the research, regulatory and educational
initiatives that would be required to discover and implement effective
preventive measures, such as vaccines, competitive exclusion agents in animal
feed and other innovative tools to prevent infections in animals.

In the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the FDA can take
regulatory action against the bag of spinach or lettuce once it's contaminated,
but it has no clear mandate and certainly no resources to drive primary
prevention at the point of production. The CDC helps investigate outbreaks but
has no authority to implement preventive measures on the farm or elsewhere.

At the Department of Agriculture, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection
Service works on farms all the time but has authority only to protect animal
health, not human health. The department's Food Safety and Inspection Service
works hard to reduce E. coli contamination in beef slaughter and grinding
plants, but it is precluded from taking action on the farm. And government food
safety research, which could help discover farm-based solutions, is scattered
across dozens of agencies and offices and goes largely uncoordinated.

To their credit, federal food safety agencies and researchers, as well as
progressive elements of the animal production and food industries, are working
on the E. coli problem, each in their own way. But the lack of coordination and
the absence of clear and accountable leadership mean we do not have a defined
strategy and are wasting the scarce resources that are available for food
safety.

There are no simple answers, regulatory or otherwise, but the food safety
"system" created by Congress is a barrier to progress.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a
Connecticut Democrat, have introduced legislation that would go a long way
toward solving the problem. It would unify the federal food safety agencies
into a single agency, providing a focal point for government responsibility and
accountability. Even more important, it would give this agency and its leaders
legal authority and clear responsibility to devise science-based prevention
strategies that make better use of food safety resources and sharply reduce the
social and economic burden of food-borne illness.

It's past time Congress acted to straighten out this mess and create a modern,
integrated food safety system for the United States.

Michael R. Taylor, a professor in the University of Maryland School of
Medicine's department of epidemiology, served during the 1990s as administrator
of USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service and as FDA's deputy commissioner
for policy. His e-mail is mtaylor@epi.umaryland.edu.

Copyright + 2006, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery

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