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DEL.ICIO.USHow has the salmonella outbreak affected you?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
(updated 07/10)
If you love fresh fruit and vegetables, there’s no better time than summer. But this year, news of a widespread salmonella outbreak has kept many people from eating tomatoes, which federal disease detectives initially blamed for the infections.
Now, the cause is up in the air. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are looking at other foods that could be to blame, from jalapeno and serrano peppers to cilantro, all ingredients commonly found in fresh salsa, guacamole and pico de gallo. The CDC is warning those at increased risk of food-borne illness to avoid jalapenos and serranos, based on findings that some of those sickened with salmonella ate jalapenos but not tomatoes. Healthy people who want to avoid illness may want to steer clear, too, they said.
But they’re still warning against eating raw round red tomatoes, Roma or plum tomatoes from growing regions that haven’t been cleared in the investigation. By now, the FDA has cleared almost every region in production, including Georgia — but the outbreak is continuing, with 1,017cases as of the most recent CDC update, on July 9.
How about a burger instead? Earlier this month, Nebraska Beef, Ltd., recalled 5.3 million pounds of beef that could be contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7, after dozens of people in Ohio and Michigan were sickened with the bacteria. Some of that beef went to Kroger supermarkets. (Here’s the complete Kroger recall notice, which includes meat sold in Georgia supermarkets in the self-serve case, labeled as Private Selection Natural ground beef packages with sell-by dates of July 11 to July 21.)
And health authorities in Southwest Georgia are checking into a cluster of E. coli 0157:H7 infections in Moultrie that may be related to the ground beef recall. So far, one case showed the same strain found in patients in Ohio and Michigan; the CDC continues to investigate to see if they are linked. Meanwhile, the state health department has linked eight Georgia cases to the Barbecue Pit restaurant in Moultrie and is looking into four others that may be related.
There is much information online about protecting yourself from food-borne illness, including common-sense advice to keep hot foods hot, cold foods cold, to cook meat thoroughly and to avoid contaminating kitchen counters, plates and other foods with raw meats, eggs and seafood. Hand-washing is important, too. (You can find more information on precautions from the Partnership for Food Safety Education and from a federal food safety web site that lumps together resources from various agencies, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to the Environmental Protection Agency, which monitors agricultural pesticide use.)
That’s helpful information if you’re at higher risk of food borne illness. People who suffer from a chronic health condition or illness, such as cancer, HIV/AIDS or diabetes, as well as those who are pregnant, elderly or young children, are at greater risk because their immune systems don’t work as well as those in healthy adults.
But it’s no guarantee you won’t get sick from food-borne illness at some point. The CDC estimates there are 76 million cases each year in the United States. That’s about a 1-in-4 chance. Trust for America’s Health, a nonprofit public health advocacy group, issued a report earlier this year warning of major gaps in the country’s food safety systems.
What do you think of the advice you’re getting from the government on keeping yourself and your family safe from food-borne illness outbreaks? Have you changed what you’re buying in stores or farmers’ markets, or ordering in restaurants, based on recalls or government advisories? How about how you handle food at home? And — do you dare to dip a chip?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Food Safety
Comments
By Margaret
July 7, 2008 6:42 PM | Link to this
I am lucky enough to have a grocer that tells customers about the recalls and whether the fresh vegetables have been cleared. We also wash the fresh foods again after we get home and are careful with cutting equipment, knives,boards, etc. No crosscontamination.
By Bill Marler
July 7, 2008 8:23 PM | Link to this
Tainted Food: How To Combat Food Poisoning in the United States? Mr. McCain, Mr. Obama, are You Paying Attention?
Once again, hundreds of Americans have been sickened by outbreaks of foodborne illness. This time it is nearly 1,000 (and counting) in 40 States put down by salmonella in fresh tomatoes (or is it the salsa?), and nearly 50 in Ohio and Michigan (possibly Georgia) stricken by the deadly E. coli O157:H7 bacteria, again in hamburger. Tomatoes have been recalled nearly every year for the last 10, with hundreds ill. Hamburger, well, since the spring of 2007, we have recalled over 30 million pounds after it was linked to ill people, mostly children in nearly every state. Consumers (hint candidates - voters) have lost confidence in the businesses that feed them and a government that is supposed to protect them.
After a brief lull a few years ago, we’re seeing a sweeping increase in outbreaks of salmonella, E. coli and other foodborne contaminates. There are many reasons for this ugly trend – businesses more focused on sales than safety, fragmented government agencies with conflicting missions, inadequate inspection of foods, poorly educated food handlers and lack of consumer awareness, to name a few. The reality is that we now live in a global food supply, like it or not, and we need to come up with global solutions that leverage our scientific and technological capabilities to prevent human illness and death.
These outbreaks should be good news to a lawyer like me, since I specialize in representing people sickened by tainted food. But it isn’t, because it means I’ll be seeing more four and five-year-old kids hooked up to kidney dialysis machines, their lives hanging by a thread because they ate a tainted burger topped by contaminated tomatoes.
In the last few months, I’ve asked some of the leading experts in the field – doctors, researchers, food safety consultants and governmental officials - to suggest what the next President - be it McCain or Obama - could do to combat this recurring epidemic. Here are the “top eleven” of what they (with a few edits and additions by me) suggest:
* Improve surveillance of bacterial and viral diseases. First responders - ER physicians and local doctors - need to be encouraged to test for pathogens and report findings directly to local and state health departments and the CDC promptly. Right now, for every person counted in an outbreak there are some 20 to 40 times those that are sick but never tested. The more we test, the quicker we know we have an outbreak and the quicker it can be stopped. * These same governmental departments, whether local, state or federal, need to learn to “play well together.” Turf battles need to take a back seat to stopping an outbreak and tracking it to its source. That means resources need to be provided and coordination encouraged so illnesses can be promptly stopped and the offending producer - not an entire industry - are brought to heal. * Require real training and certification of food handlers at restaurants and grocery stores. There also should be incentives for ill employees not to come to work when ill. We should impose fines and penalties on employers who do not cooperate. * Stiffen license requirements for large farm, retail and wholesale food outlets, so that nobody gets a license until they and their employees have shown they understand the hazards and how to avoid them. * Increase food inspections. While domestic production has continued to be a problem, imports pose an increasing risk, especially if terrorists were to get into the act. Points of export and entry are a logical place to step up monitoring. We need more inspectors - domestically and abroad - and we need to require that they receive the training in how to identify and control hazards. * Reorganize federal, state and local food safety agencies to increase cooperation and reduce wasteful overlap and conflicts. Reform federal, state and local agencies to make them more proactive, and less reactive. This too requires financial resources and accountability. We also need to modernize food safety statutes by replacing the existing collection of often conflicting laws and regulation with one uniform food safety law of the highest standard. * There are too few legal consequences for sickening or killing customers by selling contaminated food. We should impose stiff fines, and even prison sentences for violators, and even stiffer penalties for repeat violators. * We need to use our technology to make food more traceable so that when an outbreak occurs authorities can quickly identify the source and limit the spread of the contamination and stop the disruption to the economy. When I buy a book on line I can track it all the way to my mailbox. However, we have yet to find the source of a tomato (or salsa) outbreak after months of sickening hundreds. * Promote university research to develop better technologies to make food safe and for testing foods for contamination. Provide tax breaks for companies that push food safety research and employee training. Greatly expand irradiation of raw hamburger and other high-risk products. * Improve consumer understanding of the risks of food-borne illness. Foster a popular campaign similar to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which uses consumer power to promote a no-tolerance policy toward growers and companies that produce tainted food. * Provide Presidential leadership on a topic that impacts every single one of us.Perhaps this is a bit too much to ask the presidential candidates to chew on? However, they should think about it at least politically, if not morally. In America in 2008 it is criminal, that according to the CDC, ever year nearly a quarter of our population is sickened, 350,000 hospitalized and 5,000 die, because they ate food. People who eat food and get sick also vote. Mr. McCain, Mr. Obama, do the math.