Minnesota Farmers Union

(October 16, 2009) - The Sunday, October 4, 2009 issue of the New York Times featured a story that gave dramatic visibility to the issue of food safety in the beef industry. The article, "E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection," told the story of a 22-year-old woman who was left paralyzed because she ate a "hamburger that her mother had grilled for their Sunday dinner in early fall 2007" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html). Cargill "recalled 844,812 pounds of ground beef on October 6, 2007, after an estimated 940 people were sickened."

The reaction to the article was immediate with responses from the defenders of the meatpacking industry, to food safety experts, to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), to members of Congress. It even led to an article in The Economist (United Kingdom) that said, "America's dirty secret is that it is one of the most dangerous places in the developed world to eat" (http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14627082).

(August 24, 2009) - Shortly after we began writing this column nine years ago, critics of genetically modified crops (GMO) tested some tortilla chips and found the protein from StarLink corn in the chips. That discovery set off a massive recall of corn products because the StarLink corn was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for animal feed but not for human food.

That was the first time that the EPA had approved the growing of a GMO corn for cattle feed only while awaiting results showing that the protein expressed by the StarLink gene would not create allergic problems if eaten by humans. The EPA also established a set of requirements to require farmers to segregate the StarLink corn from the rest of the corn crop. Despite all of the safeguards put on paper, they did not work very well in real life and StarLink genes ended up in the food supply.

In some ways, the USDA has replicated the problems created by EPA's split approval of StarLink corn with their decision to consider E. coli O157:H7 not to be an adulterant when found on beef primals and intact steaks and roasts, but recognizing that it is a disease causing adulterant when found in hamburger. The most common problem of this split approval arises because the bench trim from primals ends up being converted into ground beef.

(August 14, 2009) - In response to the principles developed by the White House Food Safety Working Group, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) jointly announced on July 31, 2009 that they were taking steps to increase the security of the US food supply (USDA News Release 0359-09).

DHHS announced that its Food and Drug Administration had issued draft guidelines “aimed at minimizing or eliminating contamination of leafy greens, tomatoes, and melons that can cause foodborne illnesses.”

“Agriculture Secretary Vilsack announced that the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) is issuing guidelines for inspectors to begin conducting routine sampling of bench trim for E. Coli. Bench trim is pieces left over from steaks and other cuts that are then used to make ground beef.” In this column we will be focusing on the new sampling of bench trim.

(August 7, 2009) - One of several comments that we have run across since we began writing about food safety is that imposing additional requirements on slaughterhouses is unnecessary because the ultimate responsibility belongs to the person cooking the meat.

One person writes, "Just cook it stupid! We're trying to protect people from ignorance...never going to happen no matter how hard producers or government tries."

A blogger responding to that comment says, "Amen. Brother!!! Americans would rather [complain] about everything than take personal responsibility. Leave the patty in the pan until it is 160 degrees, problem solved."

We believe that those preparing food items should engage in safe food handling procedures, including frequent hand washing and the use of separate cutting boards for meat and vegetable products. Certainly it would not hurt for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to better communicate the importance of safe food handling in restaurants and at home.

(July 31, 2009) - The July 21, 2009 romaine lettuce recall by Tanimura & Antle puts another exclamation point on the issue of food safety. The lettuce was being recalled because of a positive result for Salmonella on a random test conducted by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture. As of Sunday, July 26, 2009, the recall had not been posted on the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) "2009 Recalls, Market Withdrawals, & Safety Alerts" website even though Tanimura & Antle posted it on their site on July 21.

When President Obama established the Food Safety Working Group in the White House, he said, "We are a nation built on the strength of individual initiative. But there are certain things that we can't do on our own. There are certain things that only a government can do. And one of those things is ensuring that the foods we eat...are safe and don't cause us harm."

(July 24, 2009) - Food safety has been getting a lot of attention lately. In response to the peanut butter, pistachio, and toll house cookie recalls, the House Energy and Safety Committee has approved the Food Safety Enforcement Act of 2009 to strengthen and expand the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) role in food safety and inspection. To gauge the response of the agricultural community, the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing on this legislation.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a White House Food Safety Group was formed by the Obama administration. In July 2009, the Working Group recommended "a new, public health-focused approach to food safety based on three core principles: (1) prioritizing prevention; (2) strengthening surveillance and enforcement; and (3) improving response and recovery"
(http://www.foodsafetyworkinggroup.gov/FSWG_Fact_Sheet.pdf).

In all this, major-crop and livestock farmers are worried that the move toward increased emphasis on food safety will lead to the FDA inspection of farms as part of its role in protecting the integrity of the food ingredients that are produced by farmers. Many involved in beef production are resistant to an animal identification system that would allow traceback to the farm-level.

(July 17, 2009) - As part of researching and writing this column for nine years now, we have uncovered a number of remarkable divergences between the original intents of public policies and, after years of reshaping, their current actual administration. We thought nothing would surprise us in this regard. Wrong.

The jolt to our consciousness came when researching food safety issues, specifically issues surrounding meat.

We assumed all the systemic sources of potential bacterial contamination of meat had been eliminated decades ago through hard-fought public policy legislation and strict federal enforcement. That would leave random, largely uncontrollable sources of contamination, which we assumed were the reasons for the various recalls of meat and other food products.

We were shocked by the revelation reported by John Munsell, Manager, Foundation for Accountability in Regulatory Enforcement (FARE), and quoted in last week's column, that a USDA sampling experiment found that 8 of "24 packages of vacuum packaged boxed beef items" tested positive for E. coli bacteria. Even more troubling than that, the USDA does not consider E. coli on the surface of primal cuts of beef to be an adulterant.

BUT if the Bush administration's USDA would have had its way, that would have been fixed.