The administration on Tuesday announced long-desired steps that agencies will take to help repair the beleaguered food safety system, including the creation of a nationwide trace-back system to more quickly identify the food-source of an outbreak.
The new executive branch actions are a response to a spate of food safety scares that have occurred since 2006, including the nation's biggest recall of beef and one of the biggest recalls in history, involving peanut products. Lawmakers and consumer advocacy groups had been calling for a national trace-back system for years.
"Multiple federal, state, and local agencies all play essential roles in managing outbreaks but lack a unified structure or adequate provisions for sharing data in an emergency. These limitations make it essential for federal agencies to improve the traceability of food and the response to outbreaks of foodborne illness," state the findings of a food safety working group that President Obama convened in March. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack co-chair the group, since HHS and USDA oversee different parts of the food supply.
The group has called for FDA, within three months, to issue draft guidance for the food industry on steps companies can take to establish product tracing systems. Within that same time frame, federal agencies will create a new incident command system that will link all relevant agencies, plus state and local governments, to tackle outbreaks of foodborne illness. The idea is that this communications network would harmonize information sharing. Today, 15 separate federal agencies handle food safety.
In addition, social media will continue to be a tool that the government uses, in the event of an outbreak, for communicating with citizens. An improved, personal alert system will be made available on a future upgrade of foodsafety.gov to allow consumers to subscribe to recall notifications. The first stage of the process will be complete within 90 days, according to today's announcement.
COMMENTS
There are two federal agencies responsible for food safety. The FDA is one, the USDA is the other. In general, foods that go from farm to table with little processing are the purview of USDA (US Dept of Agriculture) (Meat, fresh veggies, most cereal, etc). Anything with substantial processing, additives, etc is most likely the purview of the FDA (most prepared meals, mixes, etc.).
One of the biggest "gaps" is the incompatibility of the data for these two agencies. USDA (starting with former CIO Bob Suda) has been through a major effort to properly define and make interoperable its internal systems. FDA is behind, but engaged in similar pursuits -- witness this article.
Now one might ask how well these two agencies will coordinate joint data and operations. Getting one's own house in order is a prerequisite, and with that issue addressed, aligning the two agencies systems is critical to proper management of food stuff safety.
The tracking issue mentioned is really a supply chain problem and it is critically important to track and prevent contamination. Contamination might occur accidentally, but it may also be a form of attack. For instance, intentional contamination of grain with the hoof and mouth virus could mean destruction of domestic meat production by killing off the entire domestic meat animal herd. To solve the supply-chain problem, it is necessary to involve the producers, packers, manufacturers, drug companies, distributors and retailers. It is also necessary to engage another agency, the USDOT (US Dept of Transportation) to understand the shipping and transport of foodstuffs.
This is a very big job, and should not be relegated to just one agency unless that agency has the clear charter and funding to reach across all these lines. If food is to be reasonably safe, it is a job that needs to be done -- but let's make sure the designated players know what's in the works and understand and accept their various roles across the board.
arty 07/08/09 03:18 pm ET
By then its to late the cow is out of the barn. Instead of tracing back, why dont we insure there is no issue to begin with. The manufactureing industry found in the seventys that you can not inspect quality into the product. The employees and the company should be responcible for the quality of the food. All of these plants had issues, why were they not being responcible to begin with.
Michael J. Czora 07/08/09 02:19 pm ET