The Government’s Recent Look At Food Safety After Peanut Poisoning
February 16th, 2009
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Christopher Meunier, 7, hadn’t felt very sick since he was a little boy, but in late November, he suddenly had a high fever and bloody diarrhea and started throwing up.
He was just in severe pain, said his mother, Gabrielle Meunier of South Burlington, Vt. He said, ‘It hurts so bad, I want to die’ something you don’t expect to hear out of a 7-year-old’s mouth.
In the hospital for six days, Christopher had salmonella poisoning, making him one of more than 500 people sickened across the country after eating peanut butter or peanut products made at a P.C.A. or Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Ga.
The F.D.A. has charged that the company knowingly shipped poisoned foods to some of the most enormous food makers in the country from a plant that was never designed to make peanut butter safely, causing one of the most extensive food recalls in history. The company responded that it disagreed with some of the agency’s findings and that it had taken extraordinary measures to identify and recall all products that have been identified as presenting a potential risk.
Food scares have become as well known as Midwestern tornadoes. Cantaloupes, jalape?os, lettuce, spinach and tomatoes have all been subject to major recalls in past years. And a fast growing list of producers and trade associations joined consumer advocates in begging for stricter regulations calls that the Bush administration largely rejected.
A clutch of legislative proposed measures this year would create repairs to the system, and people offering those proposed measures expect President Obama to back them because, as a candidate, he repeatedly promised reforms.
Far too often, poisoned food is not recalled until too late, Mr. Obama said last year. When I become president, it won’t be business as usual when it comes to food safety. I will provide additional money to hire more F.D.A. food inspectors.
Nearly all of the proposed legislation under consideration would need companies like the Peanut Corporation of America to lay out specific plans for manufacturing safely and testing routinely. The bills would require that test results and other records be made available to Food and Drug Administration inspectors upon demand, and would provide additional money for more intense inspections of domestic and foreign food factories. Some would also fix the patchwork system by which outbreaks are detected.
Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, also propose creating a food agency independent of the F.D.A. so that food would receive single-minded attention. At present, at least 12 federal agencies regulate food safety. The battle between those who would strengthen the F.D.A. and those who would break it up will be an important fight this year.
I think I can prevail on the president to take a good fresh look at this, Mr. Durbin said. We can no longer forgive or explain what’s happening with food safety in this country.
Neither the White House nor the Health and Human Services Department would say anything on Thursday. But the recent peanut situation, critics say, demonstrates just how very bad the system needs fixing, beginning with the patchwork surveillance system that is the first indicator that something has gone very wrong.
Situations similar to Christopher’s are reported to local health departments, which in turn are to report them to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By mid-November, the disease centers had seen enough cases of a similar strain of salmonella to be worried.
The numbers were not necessarily significant initially one here, one there, said Lola Russell, a disease centers spokeswoman. Over time, those numbers began to rise.
By the middle of December, the Minnesota Department of Health, known as among the best in the nation, had learned that nine people with salmonella poisoning. As a result, the department’s Team Diarrhea, a group of graduate students who work nights, started getting in touch with patients and their caregivers to get information about their food choices .
We had a lot of individuals that eat peanut butter, said Carlota Medus, a state epidemiologist. But none of the brand names were matching up well.
Other states were reporting similar situations, but as in Minnesota, no one could figure out the shared food. The process is filled with uncertainty. State health officials ask people what they remember eating in the days before they became ill. Poor recollection and bad records side swipe these efforts, and officials are often sent on aimless pursuits.
Having to wait is part of the problem. More than two weeks generally pass between the time someone is diagnosed with an illness and the result of a body fluid sample test is passed on to Food and Drug Administration officials.
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He was just in severe pain, said his mother, Gabrielle Meunier of South Burlington, Vt. He said, ‘It hurts so bad, I want to die’ something you don’t expect to hear out of a 7-year-old’s mouth.
In the hospital for six days, Christopher had salmonella poisoning, making him one of more than 500 people sickened across the country after eating peanut butter or peanut products made at a P.C.A. or Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Ga.
The F.D.A. has charged that the company knowingly shipped poisoned foods to some of the most enormous food makers in the country from a plant that was never designed to make peanut butter safely, causing one of the most extensive food recalls in history. The company responded that it disagreed with some of the agency’s findings and that it had taken extraordinary measures to identify and recall all products that have been identified as presenting a potential risk.
Food scares have become as well known as Midwestern tornadoes. Cantaloupes, jalape?os, lettuce, spinach and tomatoes have all been subject to major recalls in past years. And a fast growing list of producers and trade associations joined consumer advocates in begging for stricter regulations calls that the Bush administration largely rejected.
A clutch of legislative proposed measures this year would create repairs to the system, and people offering those proposed measures expect President Obama to back them because, as a candidate, he repeatedly promised reforms.
Far too often, poisoned food is not recalled until too late, Mr. Obama said last year. When I become president, it won’t be business as usual when it comes to food safety. I will provide additional money to hire more F.D.A. food inspectors.
Nearly all of the proposed legislation under consideration would need companies like the Peanut Corporation of America to lay out specific plans for manufacturing safely and testing routinely. The bills would require that test results and other records be made available to Food and Drug Administration inspectors upon demand, and would provide additional money for more intense inspections of domestic and foreign food factories. Some would also fix the patchwork system by which outbreaks are detected.
Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, also propose creating a food agency independent of the F.D.A. so that food would receive single-minded attention. At present, at least 12 federal agencies regulate food safety. The battle between those who would strengthen the F.D.A. and those who would break it up will be an important fight this year.
I think I can prevail on the president to take a good fresh look at this, Mr. Durbin said. We can no longer forgive or explain what’s happening with food safety in this country.
Neither the White House nor the Health and Human Services Department would say anything on Thursday. But the recent peanut situation, critics say, demonstrates just how very bad the system needs fixing, beginning with the patchwork surveillance system that is the first indicator that something has gone very wrong.
Situations similar to Christopher’s are reported to local health departments, which in turn are to report them to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By mid-November, the disease centers had seen enough cases of a similar strain of salmonella to be worried.
The numbers were not necessarily significant initially one here, one there, said Lola Russell, a disease centers spokeswoman. Over time, those numbers began to rise.
By the middle of December, the Minnesota Department of Health, known as among the best in the nation, had learned that nine people with salmonella poisoning. As a result, the department’s Team Diarrhea, a group of graduate students who work nights, started getting in touch with patients and their caregivers to get information about their food choices .
We had a lot of individuals that eat peanut butter, said Carlota Medus, a state epidemiologist. But none of the brand names were matching up well.
Other states were reporting similar situations, but as in Minnesota, no one could figure out the shared food. The process is filled with uncertainty. State health officials ask people what they remember eating in the days before they became ill. Poor recollection and bad records side swipe these efforts, and officials are often sent on aimless pursuits.
Having to wait is part of the problem. More than two weeks generally pass between the time someone is diagnosed with an illness and the result of a body fluid sample test is passed on to Food and Drug Administration officials.
There is many you should perhaps check the quality of another person, especially if you need to trust him/her with your money or life (such as a business colleague). Would you like to find someone’s court records or maybe you’d like to check on a person’s relatives? We can help you. This supplied info can possibly save you a lot of time and money.
Are you in search of ways to get FREE one way links to push your web page up the search engine ladder to the front page so that you’ll get endless amounts of FREE traffic? Let us help you!
For the information about weight loss calculator - visit this blog.
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