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President’s Food Safety Group issues new standards

The White House has announced new food safety standards for eggs, meats and vegetables.

The tougher standards, including stiffer penalties for violators and increased inspections, were developed by President Obama’s Food Safety Working Group.  That group was headed by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.  In a Tuesday news conference, Selelius discussed the basic principles behind their recommendations.

“Preventing harm to consumers must be our top priority,” said Sebelius. “Secondly, that food safety inspections and enforcement depend on good data and analysis.  Third, that outbreaks must be identified quickly and stopped.”

Under the new rules, egg and poultry producers will have to follow new standards designed to reduce salmonella contamination, including increased testing and refrigeration for eggs. And the Food Safety Inspection Service, the Agriculture Department agency that inspects meat, will increase sampling of ground beef ingredients in an effort to better find E. coli contamination.

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack says a beefed-up trackback system is also part of the upgrade. “In order to protect consumers and their families, we are going to create a unified incident command system, and within 90 days, federal agencies will implement this new incident command system to address outbreaks of food-borne illness,” Vilsack said.

Also present at the White House news conference was Vice President Joe Biden. “To do this, we have to act quickly to create a more comprehensive, more rational, more effective approach to food safety,” said Biden. “When you think about it, it’s pretty long overdue.  Quite simply, the food safety system in our country needs an update.”

The FDA and the Agriculture Department will also create new positions to better oversee food safety.

As part of the stepped up food safety, the Food and Drug Administration issued new food safety regulations for egg producers to reduce the incidence of salmonella illness. That means FDA inspectors – or state inspectors they contract with – WILL be on the farm.  FDA Commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, “Each year, more than 142,000 illnesses occur from eggs contaminated with Salmonella enteritidis we believe that with this action we can reduce this number by more than half, probably about 60 percent.”

She says preventing egg-associated sickness caused by Salmonella is the goal and everyone in the production chain has a role, with an emphasis on refrigeration, “Requiring steps before and during the production of eggs in the poultry house and requiring other basic measures, such as refrigeration during storage and transportation all the way to the grocery store.”

She says consumers, also, must refrigerate and cook their eggs properly.  The bulk of eggs produced come from large operations that must begin following the new regulations a year from now.  Operations with three-thousand to 50-thousand laying hens have three years to comply.  And, the smallest egg operators and those selling directly to consumers are exempt from the regulations.

Hamburg says about half of egg producers currently participate in egg quality assurance programs, which are similar to the new FDA requirements.  She tells Brownfield the cost to egg producers will be $81 Million dollars a year – which translates to about 1 cent per 1 dozen eggs.

White House – Food Safety Working Group

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  So what are the details? What are the exact measures they are putting in place and how much will it cost?

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  So how long will it be before we have Federal Inspectors on every farm telling every farmer how to raise his livestock that he bought with his own sweat and blood. If we think cash for clunkers raised the Federal Deficit, what do you think programs like this will do?

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