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Now if you think that Salmonella in Peanuts is making news these days - well you’re right. It seems that Barack Obama - the 44th US president may have had his own expereince that he decided to create a new Food Safety Working Group. And the best thing about it - it was officially announced at his weekly address.

That’s right -  up there with the big agenda. The economy, the war in Iraq, Recession and now the deadly peanut.

Have a read and tell me what you think.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
_______________________________________________________________________________
EMBARGOED UNTIL 6:00 AM ET                              SATURDAY, March 14, 2009

WEEKLY ADDRESS: President Barack Obama Announces Key FDA Appointments and Tougher Food Safety Measures
 

WASHINGTON – In his weekly address, President Barack Obama announced the appointments of Dr. Margaret Hamburg as Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Dr. Joshua Sharfstein as the Principal Deputy Commissioner, as well as the creation of a new Food Safety Working Group.  This Food Safety Working Group will be chaired by the Secretaries of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture and it will coordinate with other agencies and senior officials to advise the President on improving coordination throughout the government, examining and upgrading food safety laws, and enforcing laws that will keep the American people safe.

In addition, the President also announced two other measures to protect the American people.  The Department of Agriculture will close a loophole to prevent diseased cows from entering the food supply.  And, the government will invest in the FDA to substantially increase the number of food inspectors and modernize food safety labs.
 

President Obama announced his appointments of the following individuals today:

Margaret “Peggy” Hamburg
Dr. Hamburg is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in public health and medicine, and an authority on global health, public health systems, infectious disease, bioterrorism and emergency preparedness. She served as the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s founding Vice President for the Biological Program. Before joining NTI, she was the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Prior to this, she served for six years as the Commissioner of Health for the City of New York and as the Assistant Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health.

Joshua “Josh” Sharfstein
Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein is Commissioner of Health for the City of Baltimore.  He also serves as chair of the board of four affiliated nonprofit agencies.  He has been recognized as a national leader for his efforts to protect children from unsafe jewelry and over-the-counter medication, and ensuring Americans with disabilities have access to prescription drugs. He is a member of the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice of the Institute of Medicine.

The full audio of the address is HERE. The video can be viewed online at www.whitehouse.gov.

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Washington, DC

I’ve often said that I don’t believe government has the answer to every problem or that it can do all things for all people. 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 only a government can do. And one of those things is ensuring that the foods we eat, and the medicines we take, are safe and don’t cause us harm. That is the mission of our Food and Drug Administration and it is a mission shared by our Department of Agriculture, and a variety of other agencies and offices at just about every level of government.

The men and women who inspect our foods and test the safety of our medicines are chemists and physicians, veterinarians and pharmacists. It is because of the work they do each and every day that the United States is one of the safest places in the world to buy groceries at a supermarket or pills at a drugstore. Unlike citizens of so many other countries, Americans can trust that there is a strong system in place to ensure that the medications we give our children will help them get better, not make them sick; and that a family dinner won’t end in a trip to the doctor’s office.

But in recent years, we’ve seen a number of problems with the food making its way to our kitchen tables. In 2006, it was contaminated spinach. In 2008, it was salmonella in peppers and possibly tomatoes. And just this year, bad peanut products led to hundreds of illnesses and cost nine people their lives – a painful reminder of how tragic the consequences can be when food producers act irresponsibly and government is unable to do its job. Worse, these incidents reflect a troubling trend that’s seen the average number of outbreaks from contaminated produce and other foods grow to nearly 350 a year – up from 100 a year in the early 1990s.

Part of the reason is that many of the laws and regulations governing food safety in America have not been updated since they were written in the time of Teddy Roosevelt. It’s also because our system of inspection and enforcement is spread out so widely among so many people that it’s difficult for different parts of our government to share information, work together, and solve problems. And it’s also because the FDA has been underfunded and understaffed in recent years, leaving the agency with the resources to inspect just 7,000 of our 150,000 food processing plants and warehouses each year. That means roughly 95% of them go uninspected.

That is a hazard to public health. It is unacceptable. And it will change under the leadership of Dr. Margaret Hamburg, whom I am appointing today as Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. From her research on infectious disease at the National Institutes of Health to her work on public health at the Department of Health and Human Services to her leadership on biodefense at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Dr. Hamburg brings to this vital position not only a reputation of integrity but a record of achievement in making Americans safer and more secure. Dr. Hamburg was one of the youngest people ever elected to the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine. And her two children have a unique distinction of their own. Their birth certificates feature her name twice – once as their mother, and once as New York City Health Commissioner. In that role, Dr. Hamburg brought a new life to a demoralized agency, leading an internationally-recognized initiative that cut the tuberculosis rate by nearly half, and overseeing food safety in our nation’s largest city. 

Joining her as Principal Deputy Commissioner will be Dr. Joshua Sharfstein. As Baltimore’s Health Commissioner, Dr. Sharfstein has been recognized as a national leader for his efforts to protect children from unsafe over-the-counter cough and cold medications. And he’s designed an award-winning program to ensure that Americans with disabilities had access to prescription drugs.

Their critical work – and the critical work of the FDA they lead – will be part of a larger effort taken up by a new Food Safety Working Group I am creating. This Working Group will bring together cabinet secretaries and senior officials to advise me on how we can upgrade our food safety laws for the 21st century; foster coordination throughout government; and ensure that we are not just designing laws that will keep the American people safe, but enforcing them. And I expect this group to report back to me with recommendations as soon as possible.

As part of our commitment to public health, our Agriculture Department is closing a loophole in the system to ensure that diseased cows don’t find their way into the food supply. And we are also strengthening our food safety system and modernizing our labs with a billion dollar investment, a portion of which will go toward significantly increasing the number of food inspectors, helping ensure that the FDA has the staff and support they need to protect the food we eat.

In the end, food safety is something I take seriously, not just as your President, but as a parent. When I heard peanut products were being contaminated earlier this year, I immediately thought of my 7-year old daughter, Sasha, who has peanut butter sandwiches for lunch probably three times a week. No parent should have to worry that their child is going to get sick from their lunch. Just as no family should have to worry that the medicines they buy will cause them harm. Protecting the safety of our food and drugs is one of the most fundamental responsibilities government has, and, with the outstanding team I am announcing today, it is a responsibility that I intend to uphold in the months and years to come.

Thank you.

It seems that the management of PCA stuffed up pretty badly. Let me say - Senior Management and the way they ran their company.

With bankruptcy and one of the biggest lawsuits against them approaching over the next few month - there’s no escape. With over 600 cases linked to them and 9 deaths, it looks like a pretty bad scenario.

there could be some good news out of this  - it might out a strong  message to the food companies out there. Start spending money on good microbiologist and place them high in the companies or risk bankruptcy. Not a bad way to approach it.

As I write - there news that the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) on Friday filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in Virginia.

This comes just days after PCA’s president, Stewart Parnell, refused to answer questions from members of the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee.

That subcommittee is looking for ways to prevent (easy - have a pathogen monitoring program in place) another outbreak like this one, which has forced food manufacturers to recall more 2,000 products that contain peanut butter or paste made at PCA’s Blakely, Georgia, plant.

The bankruptcy action also comes on the heels of Thursday’s order by the Texas Department of State Health Services to recall all products PCA has ever shipped from its plant in Plainview, Texas.

During an investigation of that plant, inspectors discovered dead rodents, bird feathers, and rodent excrement in a crawl space above the production area. (Again - poor managment and focus on hygiene)

Plainview is the second PCA plant where inspectors have found unsanitary conditions.

Inspectors also uncovered documents that revealed PCA shipped peanut products that had tested positive for salmonella, including the strain linked to the current outbreak: Salmonella Typhimurium. Now if that not crimmal negligence then I’m not saure what is. 

That discovery also exposed a dirty secret in the food manufacturing industry: companies are not required to disclose internal tests to the FDA or state officials which I think is totally wrong.

PCA is now the focus of a criminal investigation for allegedly shipping tainted products. It also faces more than a dozen civil lawsuits.

Damaging evidence has already surfaced in the investigation, including e-mails that indicate Parnell ordered products he knew were tainted with salmonella to be shipped anyway.

Some of those potentially-tainted products made their way to poor school children of victims of recent disasters.

Legal experts say companies file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection to liquidate their assets and distribute the proceeds to creditors.

PCA’s bankruptcy filing reveals the company’s debt and assets both ranged between $1 million and $10 million, according to the Associated Press. The filing also states the recalls have been “extremely devastating” to PCA’s financial condition.

Legal teams handling some of the recent litigation against PCA told the Associated Press they are optimistic that victims and their families can still be compensated.

While the bankruptcy proceeding could postpone litigation against the company, the lawyers said they will push a judge to allow the civil actions to proceed.

Many lawyers have also filed lawsuits against King Nut Co. and Kellogg Co., which used PCA-tainted ingredients in their products.

“Even if Peanut Corp. doesn’t have enough insurance and enough assets to cover the damages, King Nut and Kellogg will have to step up,” attorney Bill Marler told the Associated Press. He has filed seven lawsuits against PCA on behalf of more than 40 possible victims.

None of PCA’s products were sold directly to consumers. They were distributed to long-term care facilities, universities, food service industries, and private label food companies in the United States, Canada, Haiti, Korea, and Trinidad.

U.S. food makers, however, used the company’s peanut butter and paste to make various products, including cookies, crackers, ice cream, energy bars, and dog treats. That’s why so many food manufacturers have recently recalled their products.

And the list of products pulled off store shelves continues to grow almost daily, making it one of the country’s largest food-related recalls.

The massive recall, however, does not include any of the major brands of peanut butter sold on grocery stores shelves. That’s a message the makers of Jif, Skippy, and Peanut Pan peanut butters have taken great measures to broadcast to consumers. Some have taken out ads in newspapers nationwide to reassure buyers their products are safe to eat.

The FDA now has a complete list of all products recalled in the salmonella outbreak on its website and it have over 50 recalls and counting.

All consumers can check that Web site daily to see if their favorite products are included in any recalls.

Salmonella is an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and those with weakened immune systems. Symptoms include fever, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. In rare cases, it can cause more severe illnesses, including arterial infections (i.e., infected aneurysms) and endocarditis.Health officials say salmonella can also be transferred to humans who handle pet treats tainted with the organism. They advise pet owners to wash their hands after they come touch these pet treats.

Symptoms of salmonella infection in pets include lethargy, diarrhea, bloody diarrhea, fever, and vomiting. Some pets, however, may have a decreased appetite, fever and abdominal pain.

The U.S. health officials were the first to be alerted to the current peanut-based salmonella outbreak through a special government computer network called PulseNet.

The only problem with the system is that it relies on doctors testing patients and it takes interviews with patients to identify the food source. Here is an explanation of how this system works:

Q: What is PulseNet?

A: It’s a national network of public health labs coordinated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When state and local health officials get lab results of people sick with food poisoning, they post information about cases on the WebBoard, the PulseNet listserv. State and national health officials use this information to look for patterns.

PulseNet gets its name from a lab technology called pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, which enables investigators to do DNA “fingerprinting” of the infection bacteria and its strain subtype.

It’s somewhat like an FBI database that can compare fingerprints from an arrest record in California to fingerprints at the scene of a crime in Florida and determine if it’s the same crook. It takes about two days to run a genetic fingerprint on a sample. Each year, PulseNet identifies more than 300 clusters of patients infected with salmonella, E. coli, shigella and listeria.

Q: How comprehensive is it?

A: This network can’t catalog every case in an outbreak. Only some people who get sick go to doctors, and not all doctors run tests to confirm what infection the patient has. Health officials estimate that the actual number of illnesses in an outbreak may be 10 times higher than the lab network reports.

But by detecting an outbreak while it’s still going on and then identifying the food that’s spreading it, health officials believe they can prevent countless illnesses and some deaths.

Other countries have similar systems. The CDC routinely shares data with Canada, but not with other countries.

Q: How long does it take to identify a foodborne germ?

A: It generally takes two to four weeks from the time the first person in a cluster gets ill until the cluster is detected by PulseNet. In the case of the peanut butter outbreak, CDC first detected a national pattern in November, the month after substantial numbers of lab-tested illnesses first emerged.

CDC officials did not disclose the outbreak until January. They said it took more than a month for health officials to interview sick patients to determine that peanut butter was the food they all had in common. Then, a test from a peanut butter container in Minnesota found the outbreak strain of salmonella.

Q: Can’t this process be sped up?

A: The PulseNet system itself is relatively rapid. But investigation timelines are driven by what patients and doctors do about illnesses, and how quickly health officials in individual states react.

“The PulseNet system is a great system. The problem is it’s a 22nd century system resting on pillars of epidemiologic research that go back to the 1800s,” said Bill Marler, a Seattle plaintiff’s attorney who specializes in national food poisoning cases.

Such limitations may explain why Florida has had no lab-confirmed cases in the current salmonella outbreak. Unlike some other states, Florida does not require doctors and hospitals to send salmonella samples to a state lab for analysis and does not budget to handle such a workload. At least 270 samples that may be the outbreak strain have been collected, but only 25 were sent to a state lab for genetic fingerprinting.

Q: How long has this network been in place?

A: PulseNet was launched in 1996, but didn’t have the participation of all states until 2002. The cost is shared by the CDC and states. CDC says it spends about $5.6 million annually, but has no figure for what states spend.

The origin of the system lies with a 1993 outbreak of E. coli food poisoning in the western United States. CDC successfully used DNA fingerprinting to nail the strain of E. coli O157:H7 that sickened hundreds and killed four children; it was traced to hamburger patties served at Jack in the Box restaurants. That’s when the idea of a collaborative system among the states and federal government began to take shape.

Source: http://www.cdc.gov/pulsenet/

The EU and US positions at a Codex meeting to set international standards on food safety foreshadow future legislation that would affect hygiene control measures in manufacturing plants, and the manufacture of powdered formulae, ready-to-eat foods, and pasteurised liquid eggs.

In the six day meeting which ended on the 4 November in New Delhi, India, national representatives to Codex’s food hygiene committee also decided to start work on drafting safety guidelines setting standards to control Campylobacter and Salmonella specie in broiler chicken meat.

At the New Delhi meeting they discussed various positions, including those relating to proposed standards for pasteurized liquid whole eggs, hygienic practice for processing powdered formulae for infants and children, pathogen control measures for Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat foods & guidelines for evaluating manufacturing control measures.

Codex is a multilateral body set up to develop food safety and other standards that would apply to all member countries.

It operates under the aegis of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Health Organisation.

The standards are recognised as international benchmarks by one of the multilateral agreements of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and aim to eliminate many of what the UN calls “unjustified technical barriers” to food imports set up by some countries.

The standards also serve to harmonise food safety laws globally, aiding multinational processors in following the law no matter where they trade.

The standards on each particular topic and food type can undergo a huge revision process at various levels of Codex decision making bodies, over a number of years. Member countries must then transcribe the standards into their national laws.

The proposed standard setting what pathogen controls for Listeria monocytogenes ready-to-eat food processors must put in place is based in the main on US risk assessments, according to Codex documents.

Based on the risk assessments, a working group led by Germany concluded that a zero tolerance standard for L. monocytogenes have a proportional reduction in the rates of illness from foods contaminated with the pathogen.

A study commissioned by the food hygiene committee showed that the application of microbiological criteria at a given point of the production chain is only one of the measures that need to be applied, to bring down contamination rates.

The committee proposes to exclude from the criteria foods that are processing in such a way to ensure the killing of L. monocytogenes and for which recontamination is not possible.

The foods must also be processed and handled under systems adhering to good hygienic practice (GHP), a separate international standard.

Such foods include those given a listericidal treatment in the package and those that are produced through aseptic processing and packaging.

The group includes dehydrated products such as powdered milk, dehydrated soup mixes, herbs and spices, fresh, uncut and unprocessed vegetables and fruits, soft drinks, beer and spirits.

At the meeting the EU delegation also proposed that the standard should specifically include ready-to-eat foods for infants and those with medical conditions.

The EU supports a 100 colony forming units per gram (cfu/g) limit on the pathogen for ready-to-eat foods, if the food manufacturer is able to demonstrate the maximum would not be exceeded throughout the shelf-life.

The EU delegation also noted that setting a zero tolerance standard, where a negative reading is set at 25g = 0.04 colony forming units per gram (cfu/g) “might cause misunderstandings”.

The EU also wants clarification on foods not covered by the testing standard, pointing out that previous discussions had also discussed products for which Listeria monocytogenes is “very unlikely” to be detected.

Clarification is also needed about the proposed exclusion of foods for which there is less than ‘1 log’ growth during 1.3 times the expected shelf life, the EU stated in its submission. Various definitions of ’shelf-life’ might confuse the issue.

At the meeting the Codex committee also set its priorities for proposed standards, with those for egg products topping the list.

Other priorities in order are standards for infant and children foods; combining two codes of practice for various nuts into one; setting a single hygienic code for fruits, vegetable and products made from them; quick frozen foods, spices and aromatic plants; low-acid and acidified low-acid canned foods and aseptically processed and packaged low-acid canned foods, natural mineral waters, frog legs, catering, and street-vended foods.

The WTO’s Codex Alimentarius Commission is the body set up to harmonise food safety and other export requirements around the world.

Member countries’ representatives meet regularly to debate a common position or standard on every aspect of such requirements, from the holding temperatures in frozen meat should be kept at, to processing requirements for specific types of cheeses.

Agreements forged at Codex meetings could eventually affect the way processors operate worldwide as they become incorporated into national laws in various countries around the world.

Source

The giant chocolate manufacturer, Cadbury has pleaded guilty in a UK court to three breaches of the country’s food and hygiene regulations, admitting that it was responsible for allowing salmonella contaminated chocolate bars to be sold on the market last year.

In fact, the public recall of the chocolate was not voluntary but was forced by the regulators where 37 people fell sick and over one million chocolate bars were recalled.

Although it is rare to have salmonella implicated in chocolate, the products manufactured in England have affected 37 people between February to June 2006.

The outbreak in June 2006 prompted Cadbury to reveal their findings. In the findings, a leaking pipe was discovered that leaked waste water into the milk chocolate crumb mix. This mix is the base ingredient in several chocolate bar varieties.

On testing, the company revealed the presence of the rare strain of Salmonella, however they did not report these findings to food regulators or to instigate a public health recall.

It was not until the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) published the results of their own outbreak investigation in June 2006 that the company disclosed their findings and withdrew seven products. This amounted to over a million chocolate bars from the UK market.

In defence, the manufacturer stated in an official media release that the reason they did not initially report their contamination findings was because the low levels of microorganisms found did not warrant such an action. This was a poor response and as part of due diligence should have acted on the results initially. In most developed countries, isolation of salmonella is notifiable.

A report released in July 2006 by the Advisory Committee on Microbiological Safety of Food (ACMSF), an expert committee that advises the FSA, responded with the statement that “the presence of Salmonella in ready-to- eat foods such as chocolate is unacceptable at any level”. The company implicated was under such pressure that it released a further statement declaring that they have changed their protocols and that any products showing traces of Salmonella, regardless of how low the levels are, will be destroyed.

Cadbury will be sentenced for the offences on the on 13 July at at Birmingham Crown Court. The company still faces other charges in a separate regional court over the same incident.

Cadbury’s failure at the time to fully adhere to the new EU-wide hygiene rules whihc is based on Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) analysis, serves as a warning to other processors who may also have been tardy in making sure the system is in place at all their plants.

In April this year the Birmingham City Council decided to bring the company to court for the incident, alleging the company knew about the contamination but still put the products on the market.

“Mistakenly, we did not believe that there was a threat to health and thus any requirement to report the incident to the authorities,” Cadbury said in a statement today. “We accept that this approach was incorrect. Quality has always been at the heart of our business, but the process we followed in the UK in this instance was unacceptable. We have apologised for this and do so again today.”

So far, Cadbury has spent about £20m since last year on “new and rigorous” quality control procedures to ensure any potential future incidence is eliminated.

Cadbury said it is examining the new charges and would respond at the appropriate time. A hearing is set for 24 July.

“We sincerely regret this lapse and are focused on ensuring that this can never happen again,” the company stated. “A major review has taken place of our quality, health and safety procedures globally to learn lessons and ensure that our consumers can rely on the highest levels of processes and standards wherever we operate.”

The court action targets the company’s alleged failure to report to food regulators that its microbiological testing in January last year had found a rare Salmonella strain in the chocolate products.

The products were on the market until June, when the Food Standards Agency revealed some people had fallen sick from the chocolates. Cadbury then withdrew the seven chocolate products from the UK market

The Birmingham City Council court action relates to three offences. The first charge accuses Cadbury of being in contravention of the General Food Regulations 2004.

The council alleges that, between January 19 and March 10 Cadbury “placed on the market ready-to-eat chocolate products which were unsafe, in that they were injurious to health and unfit for human consumption due to the presence of Salmonella organisms”.

The second charge alleged that Cadbury “failed to immediately inform the competent authorities that they had reason to believe that ready-to-eat chocolate products, placed on the market, may be injurious to human health due to the presence of Salmonella organisms”.

The third charge alleged that the company also “failed to identify hazards from ready-to-eat chocolate products contaminated with Salmonella and failed to identify critical control points and corrective actions in line with HACCP(Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) principles”.

Each offence carries a maximum penalty of an unlimited fine and up to two years of imprisonment for managers identified as causing the problem, the council said.

The contamination was traced to a leaking waste water pipe at the company’s plant in Marlbrook, Herefordshire. The pipe had dripped bacteria into the chocolate crumb used to make a variety of chocolate bars. The company allegedly knew about the problem since February, but fixed it without making a recall or notifying regulators.

The Health Protection Agency subsequently found a direct link between a salmonella outbreak affecting 37 people and the Cadbury chocolate.

The Health Protection Agency said interviews with 15 of the 37 people affected by an outbreak of Salmonella montevideo last year indicated that 13 of them reported eating products made by Cadbury.

The HPA also confirmed that samples taken from Cadbury’s factories showed the same Salmonella montevideo was present in January and February. The dates of the outbreak in the population was from February to June.

The HPA also noted the decrease in the frequency of cases of Salmonella montevideo following the company’s recall of a number of its chocolate products.

The HPA reported the company had discovered that waste water from a plant in Herefordshire had dripped down into the milk chocolate crumb, a mix that is blended with other ingredients to make some of the company’s chocolate bars.

The pipe was fixed but despite finding the Salmonella pathogen in some of its products, the company allegedly failed to make a recall at the time.

Cadbury claimed in a subsequent press release it did not disclose to officials that its products could be contaminated with the Salmonella montevideo strain as only ‘minute’ traces of the bacteria were found and the company deemed the risk too low.

The Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food (ACMSF) released a damning report in July 2006 in which it stated that: “The presence of salmonella in ready-to-eat foods such as chocolate is unacceptable at any level.”

The ACMSF also said that the company failed to correctly implement EU-wide guidelines laid down by international food safety codes, known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) analysis. New EU hygiene directives came into force at the start of this year, embodying HACCP principles in the bloc’s law.

“Cadbury’s risk assessment does not address the risk of Salmonella in chocolate in a way which the ACMSF would regard as a modern approach to risk assessment,” the ACMSF stated.

The findings of the report, published by the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA), concluded that Cadbury had used methods of product testing that were likely to underestimate the presence of the bacteria. A negative result from the tests would not necessarily mean that the product was uncontaminated.

“Based on the information provided, Cadbury appears to have used methods for product testing which the committee considered would underestimate the level and likelihood of salmonella contamination,” the advisory committee stated in its report.

“Sample heterogeneity including clumping of bacteria will influence the MPN (most probable number) estimate and therefore the approach cannot be relied upon in foods such as chocolate.”

HACCP is a science based and systematic method of identifying specific hazards and measures for their control to ensure the safety of food. Its basic principles rest on establishing control systems that focus on prevention rather than relying mainly on end-product testing.

Following a meeting with the FSA in July, Cadbury agreed to undertake ‘remedial action’, which would involve changing cleaning regimes in the plant and stepping up testing for a wider range of products.

In a statement, Cadbury Schweppes said it was “moving to a protocol in which any product evidencing contamination is destroyed.”

According to the FSA, Cadbury has pledged to carry out a positive release system whereby products will only be released for consumption if they test negative for the salmonella bacteria.

Source

Improper pasteurization of milk by the Evans Farmhouse Creamery has forced them to voluntarily recall certain milk products.

Evans Farmhouse is a family owned and operated; USDA certified organic creamery located in Norwich, New York. They bottle all their milk and make yogurt in their on-farm creamery using milk from 75 organically raised, pasture-fed Jersey cows.

The Norwich-based company sells the products under the names Evans Farmhouse All Natural Reduced Fat Cream on Top Not Homogenized Milk and Sunrise Family Farms Organic Reduced Fat Vitamin A & D Milk.

These products have a container code of 5-11 and were distributed in New York State.

Pasteurization heats milk to a temperature of >74oC for a minimum of 15 seconds to effectively eliminate all gram -ve bacteria which includes pathogens such as E.coli, Listeria and Salmonella.

Routine sampling and testing has revealed that the milk was improperly pasteurized. One such test is the phosphatase enzyme test, this enzyme occurs naturally in raw milk, however it is destroyed by pasteurization and any presence indicates poor pasteurization.

So far no related illnesses have been reported. This could be due raw milk being processed as soon as the cows are milked which unlike larger dairy processors can take days.

Evan’s Farmhouse Creamery, 5037 State Highway 23, Norwich, NY 13815, 607-334-5339

Now here is an interesting article by the Journal of Food Protection 2006 Aug;69(8):2029-35.

In this paper it talks about the growth in salad production in the UK and how it is dependent on irrigation to maintain product quality. There are concerns that irrigation with poor-quality water could pose a disease risk. This article examines the key issues in the emerging debate on the microbiological quality of water used for salad irrigation in the United Kingdom. The links between irrigation water quality and foodborne disease, and the current international guidance on irrigation water quality, are firstly reviewed. The findings indicate that a number of recent food-poisoning outbreaks have been linked to the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables and that unhygienic product handling is implicated as the principal source of contamination. There is also credible evidence that salads contaminated in the field, including by irrigation water, can pose a small disease risk at the point of sale. Although irrigation water quality standards exist in various forms internationally, there is no nationally agreed on standard used in the United Kingdom.

This paper then describes the results of a survey conducted in 2003 of United Kingdom irrigation practices that might influence the microbiological quality of salads. The survey showed that surface water is the principal irrigation water source, that overhead irrigation predominates, that the gap between the last irrigation and harvest may be < 24 h in many cases, and that current water-quality monitoring practices are generally very limited in scope. This paper concludes with a discussion of the issues emerging from the review and survey, including the need for improved water-quality monitoring, and the problems associated with establishing water quality standards that could be either too strict or too lax.

The American Type Culture collection (ATCC), has today announced the addition of the Luxembourg-based microbiology firm Mecconti s.a.r.l. to the ATCC Licensed Derivative(R) program. This initiative is aimed at improving the quality of microbiology products and protecting consumers impacted by them.

The license agreement between ATCC and Mecconti represents a major expansion of ATCC’s Licensed Derivative (LD) program for European quality control professionals and consumers.

The LD program assures QC microbiologists that commercial products bearing the LD emblem contain microorganisms with confirmed identity, viability and purity.

For-profit companies who claim to incorporate ATCC biomaterials into their own commercial products but are not part of the LD program do not comply with ATCC’s quality controls and often violate ATCC’s material transfer agreement. Any claims made by the companies about the equivalence of the microorganisms in their products directly to ATCC strains are unsubstantiated because ATCC does not test them.

ATCC VP for Licensing, Contracts and Compliance Dr. Jesus Soriano said “Quality control professionals need to know with certainty that the materials at the foundation of their testing are viable, pure and correctly identified. By purchasing materials that carry the Licensed Derivative emblem, customers can trust that the characteristics of the ATCC-derived microorganisms have been maintained and confirmed until they reach the end users.”

“As a public science organization, ATCC takes very seriously our responsibility to try to ensure the safety and quality of the materials we provide,” Soriano added.

“In joining ATCC’s effort and passing their rigorous evaluation of our quality control process, our customers can be assured that our family of microorganisms is derived directly from ATCC cultures and is controlled to maintain its identity, purity and viability in products used in the industrial, clinical or environmental setting,” Mecconti President Dr. Gerhard Huecker said.

ATCC is the world’s largest biological resource center and the most comprehensive source of standard reference cultures and reagents used by life science researchers in academic, government and industrial laboratories.

Mecconti develops freeze-dried microorganism products and dehydrated culture media for use in quality control testing of pharmaceutical, biotech and food/beverage products manufactured around the world.

Source