Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (51 page)

Melamine, a constituent of plastic dinnerware, is toxic only when consumed in large amounts. But when mixed with one of its by-products, cyanuric acid, even small amounts spontaneously form crystals in the urinary tracts of dogs and cats. More than six thousand pet owners participated in class-action lawsuits and were awarded $30 million in judgments. The FDA, which regulates pet food as animal feed, was overwhelmed by calls from distraught pet owners, but its main concern was whether melamine had entered the human food supply, and for good reason. Some of the melamine-tainted pet food had been fed to pigs and chickens, and the false rice protein went into fish feed.

My conclusion: we have only one food supply for pets, people, and farm animals, and it is global. In researching the book, I uncovered a long history of fraudulent use of melamine in fish and animal feed, as well as in pet food in modern China. In
Pet Food Politics
, I argued that safety problems with pet food must be addressed immediately. Otherwise, we must expect similar problems with human food. Hence the book’s subtitle,
The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine
.

Nonetheless, even I was taken aback when melamine turned up in Chinese infant formula and caused at least 300,000 illnesses, 50,000 hospitalizations, and six deaths. Chinese manufacturers so commonly used melamine as an adulterant that investigators discovered the chemical in a vast array of milk drinks, coffee drinks, crackers, cookies, and chocolates distributed throughout Asia and elsewhere.
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The pet food and infant formula scandals induced the Chinese government to punish perpetrators, sometimes with death sentences, and to enact new food safety laws. Pet food companies initiated routine testing for melamine. The usual calls for regulation followed. Yet two years later, a government review of the FDA’s handling of the pet food recalls merely suggested that the agency consider seeking legislative action to give it more effective methods for dealing with recalls.
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2007: Ground Beef Products (
E. coli
O157:H7)
. This particular recall focused attention on the devastation to affected individuals. It resulted
in a $100 million lawsuit filed against Cargill on behalf of an affected young dancer, Stephanie Smith, whose travails were covered extensively by the
New York Times
and other media. But it also focused attention on the meat industry’s resistance to pathogen testing as well as to its cozy relationships with USDA inspectors.

As explained in
chapter 1
, hamburger is typically made from trimmings from multiple animals (sometime hundreds) slaughtered in any number of states. To ensure safety, companies ought to test for pathogens but have little incentive to do so. If they test and find pathogens, they land in “a regulatory situation.” As a company official explained to the
New York Times:
“One, I have to tell the government, and two, the government will trace it back to them [the slaughterhouse]. So we don’t do that.” The USDA, in turn, uses a “restrained approach” to regulation. A USDA official said his agency has the power to require pathogen testing but does not use it. Why not? Because the USDA also takes the companies’ needs into consideration: “I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health.”
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2008: Ground Beef (Mad Cow Disease)
. Sometimes, ground beef induces revulsion as well as illness. The “largest to date” recall record set by pet foods did not last long. In February 2008, the Hallmark/Westland Beef Packing Company recalled more than 143 million pounds of raw and frozen beef products produced over a two-year period. An employee of the Humane Society infiltrated the plant and secretly filmed a video (“WARNING: Contains graphic footage”) displaying the slaughter of “downer” cows for food as well as other violations of USDA rules.
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Older, nonambulatory cattle are at risk for mad cow disease, or BSE (discussed in
chapter 8
). The USDA secretary said, “It is extremely unlikely that these animals were at risk for BSE because of the multiple safeguards; however, this action is necessary because plant procedures violated USDA regulations.” A particular source of concern was that Hallmark/Westland produced ground meat for federal school meals. Although BSE had never been found in U.S. cows, the incident demonstrated links between inhumane treatment of animals and public health.
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It also highlighted inadequacies in the USDA’s meat inspection system. Insiders complained that inspectors who cite slaughterhouse violations get in trouble with the USDA and are told not to record violations. Representative George Miller (Dem-CA) said the recall “raises alarming questions about the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ability to monitor the safety of meat that is being shipped to our nation’s schools. It is outrageous
that it took a non-governmental organization to shed light on the egregious abuses that were happening right under the USDA’s nose. . . . [The USDA] still can’t tell us exactly which schools may have received this tainted meat, or how much of it has already been consumed or reprocessed into other foods.”
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Lawsuits followed. Legislation did not.

2008: Peppers, not Tomatoes
(Salmonella). This outbreak demonstrated how entire industries can be damaged in the search for a source of foodborne illness. On May 22, 2008, the New Mexico Health Department notified the CDC that several people had been infected with
Salmonella
Saintpaul. Some cases clustered in the Navajo Nation and investigations by the Indian Health Service suggested tomatoes as the likely source. The FDA warned residents of New Mexico and Texas not to eat local raw tomatoes and soon expanded the warning nationally. Restaurant chains stopped serving tomatoes, consumers stopped buying them, and tomato growers lost $200 million in sales.
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To verify the source, the CDC conducted seven epidemiologic and environmental investigations, none easy to interpret. Salsa and guacamole were mentioned frequently by people who became ill; these foods contained tomatoes and either raw jalapeño or Serrano peppers. CDC investigators found the outbreak strain in peppers from Mexico. But they continued to consider tomatoes as a possible source until the end of June and did not lift the tomato warning until July 17. By that time, the domestic tomato industry had been virtually destroyed. Also destroyed was a good deal of public confidence in the safety of fresh produce and in government oversight.
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Federal officials explained their error: “Local, state, tribal, and federal response capacity often is strained during large and complex outbreaks. . . . This can cause delays.”
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Perhaps, but an analysis of the events by the Pew Charitable Trusts came to tougher conclusions. It questioned why safety officials from two federal and three state agencies insisted that tomatoes were the vector and spoke publicly “with significant variations in facts and messages.” It said officials should have learned from previous recalls and charged that despite repeated calls for action, “the establishment of mandatory, enforceable safety standards for the growing, harvesting, processing, and distribution of fresh fruits and vegetables has not happened.”
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2009: Peanut Butter
(Salmonella). Late in 2008, the CDC became aware of clusters of illness caused by
Salmonella
Typhimurium in young and old
people in schools or long-term care facilities. In interviews, 86 percent said they had eaten chicken and 77 percent said they had eaten peanut butter. Because frequencies in the general population are 85 percent for eating chicken and 59 percent for eating peanut butter, peanut butter seemed the more likely source. In January 2009, King Nut Companies, a distributor of peanut butter manufactured by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), recalled five-pound tubs of the PCA product.
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Because peanuts destined for peanut butter are roasted, the contamination must have occurred
after
processing. The plant shipped two kinds of peanut butter: bulk intended for institutions, and ingredients intended for food processors. Samples of both were found to contain the outbreak strain. Eventually, companies recalled nearly four thousand food products containing peanut butter, among them crackers, frozen chicken, emergency disaster rations, and pet foods—so many that the FDA produced an online “widget” to keep track of them.

The politics of this particular incident were especially telling. Investigations revealed that the PCA plant knowingly shipped peanut butter contaminated with
Salmonella
. When tests came back positive, PCA retested the samples. The company operated under GMPs, not HACCP. It had been inspected recently, evidently rather casually.
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PCA was involved with regulatory agencies in one other way: the company produced peanuts for export. For reasons of history (see
chapter 1
), the USDA is responsible for the safety of exported peanuts that might contain aflatoxin. Under pressure from peanut producers, the 2002 Farm Bill specifically exempted the USDA’s Peanut Standards Board from conflict-of-interest rules. This exemption permitted the head of PCA to be appointed to that board in 2008 for a term ending in 2011 (he resigned in the wake of the recall). PCA soon filed for bankruptcy, thereby avoiding claims and lawsuits.

Oddly, PCA’s plants in Texas and Georgia had organic certification; the organic inspector had issued violation notices but had no authority to close the plants. The FDA asked one recipient of PCA peanuts, WestCo Fruit and Nut Co., to voluntarily recall its products; WestCo refused. The FDA had to serve the company with a warrant and eventually seize the products. This took weeks. In March, the FDA issued after-the-fact advice to the peanut industry—voluntary and nonbinding, of course—about how to produce peanuts safely.
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Given the casual safety practices of food industries and the overall regulatory vacuum, the satirical newspaper
The Onion
proposed a creative solution to the
Salmonella
problem. It is shown in
figure 31
.

FIGURE 31
. “FDA Approves Salmonello’s.” Reprinted with permission of
The Onion
. Copyright © 2009 by Onion, Inc.,
www.theonion.com
.

This particular recall induced President Obama to signal that his administration intended to take food safety more seriously. In reference to his then seven-year-old daughter, he said: “At bare minimum, we should be able to count on our government keeping our kids safe when they eat peanut butter. That’s what Sasha eats for lunch, probably three times a week, and you know I don’t want to have to worry about whether she is going to get sick as a consequence of having her lunch.”
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The new leadership of the FDA also commented on the implications of the peanut butter recalls: “From our vantage point, the recent salmonella outbreak linked to contaminated peanut butter represented far more than a sanitation problem at one troubled facility. It reflected a failure of the FDA and its regulatory partners to identify risk and to establish and enforce basic preventive controls. And it exposed the failure of scores of food manufacturers to adequately monitor the safety of ingredients purchased from this facility.”
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2009: Pistachios
(Salmonella). Late in March 2009, the FDA announced that Setton Pistachios was voluntarily recalling about a million pounds of nuts. The FDA learned about the
Salmonella
problem from Kraft Foods, which sells a pistachio trail mix. Kraft obtained the mix from a
small nut company in Illinois, Georgia’s Nut, which evidently uses a HACCP plan; the company routinely tests for
Salmonella
and found it in Setton pistachios. Georgia Nut recalled its products and notified Kraft. Kraft informed the FDA and issued its own recall—just the way the food safety system is supposed to work.
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Other aspects worked less well. Although its packing plant had passed recent inspections with relatively minor violations, Setton knew it had
Salmonella
problems. When tests came back positive, Setton reheated the nuts but shipped them out without testing to confirm that the bacteria had been killed. The reheated pistachios often were processed on lines used for raw, potentially contaminated nuts. Setton also had a surprising method for handling the recalled nuts: it repackaged them and shipped them out. Other pistachio companies reacted to these revelations by establishing a Web site listing products that had not been recalled.
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In this instance, the FDA asked for voluntary recalls before anyone became ill, suggesting that the new management team was serious about prevention. The FDA warned food companies that it expected them to follow voluntary GMPs, explained how to do recalls, and issued guidance to pistachio growers about avoiding contaminants. But without congressional authority to force recalls and stop shipments of potentially contaminated products, the FDA could do little more.
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