Monday, July 21, 2008
Editorial: Make food traceable from farm to table
The FDA is working hard to track down what produce is sickening consumers. There's an easier, and effective, way.
From the RoundTable blog
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A food-borne salmonella outbreak so far has sickened more than 1,220 people in 42 states, the District of Columbia and Canada. Source: unknown.
Weeks after the Food and Drug Administration issued its first warning, it still isn't certain what in the nation's food supply is carrying the potentially deadly bacteria, much less where it is coming from. And not for lack of trying. Tracing the salmonella to its source is proving to be an overwhelming task.
It needn't be. It shouldn't be.
"The technology exists to trace the entire chain of a food product," Dr. David Kessler, the FDA commissioner during the Clinton and first Bush administrations, told The New York Times recently. California requires its tomato growers to be able to trace their produce from field to market, so they do. Most use electronic systems that track codes on boxes.
The FDA's associate commissioner for foods, Dr. David Acheson, told The Times that his agency lacks authority to require the food industry to have such full trace-back capabilities. Kessler disagrees.
The FDA has all the authority it needs, he argues. It simply lacks "the impetus."
Either way, the need for national regulation is apparent -- and was envisioned when Congress passed the Bioterrorism Act of 2002.
Then, the nation was worried about its enemies engaging in biological warfare by sabotaging the food chain. The FDA issued a rule under the new law intended to give federal authorities the ability to trace food back to its origin to find out how a biological agent was introduced. The rule just doesn't work, at least in a timely way.
No one suspects intentional malice in the current salmonella outbreak, which thus far has killed no one. But the FDA's inability to pin down its source quickly does expose gaping vulnerabilities in the nation's food chain.
The Bush administration's general hostility to government regulation of industry makes the FDA claims of helplessness ring hollow. If, though, it lacks authority to require full trace-back capabilities, Congress should grant it -- indeed, mandate it -- forthwith. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., has proposed such legislation.
If, as Kessler asserts, the agency can act, it should. Now. The onetime commissioner of the FDA says the regulation "could be put in place in months, not years."
That'd be too late to easily identify the source of this tomato-jalapeno-serrano pepper-cilantro scare, but in time perhaps for the next -- and any actually designed to kill.
