Salmonella outbreaks lead to food-safety changes
— -- Nuts. Americans love them. They are a heart-healthy staple of recipes, diet plans, kids' lunches and snack foods.
They have also been at the center of major salmonella outbreaks in recent years. The government and the food industry are working overtime to beef up guidelines on what companies need to do to keep consumers safe.
The salmonella outbreak in peanut products has sickened 691 and may have contributed to the deaths of nine in 46 states. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the last illness was reported on Feb. 24, products are still being sporadically recalled.
A salmonella outbreak in 2004 linked to raw almonds made dozens sick and resulted in the recall of 13 million pounds of almonds. Because of that, the Department of Agriculture has mandated that all almonds be pasteurized to kill salmonella.
And this week, 2 million pounds of pistachios were recalled because of concerns about contamination. Pistachios were a surprise because they historically have not been considered vulnerable to bacterial contamination, says Richard Matoian of the Western Pistachio Association in Fresno.
The repeated outbreaks and recalls may bring about a new day in the oversight of nut production. For the peanut industry, "This is a wake-up call," says Emory Murphy, the Georgia Peanut Commission's assistant executive director.
President Obama, who has publicly expressed concern about the safety of the peanut butter his 7-year-old daughter, Sasha, eats, has made it clear that he sees food safety as a major concern. "No parent should have to worry that their child is going to get sick from their lunch," he said in the March 14 address in which he announced the creation of the Food Safety Working Group, an interagency effort to help overhaul the oversight system.
"There's enormous public pressure placed on food processors and manufacturers to ensure farm-to-fork integrity," says Arvin Maskin, a product-liability lawyer at Weil Gotshal & Manges in New York.
Even consumer advocates who say food producers have avoided making safety a priority are seeing a change. "I think that resistance is crumbling in the wake of repeated recalls, which have cost them so much money and so much in the way of consumer confidence," says Sarah Klein, a staff attorney at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) in Washington, D.C.
'Guidance' on salmonella
After the outbreak in peanut products, the Food and Drug Administration released on March 9 its first "guidance" on how to deal with the risk of salmonella contamination in foods that include peanuts. The agency has put food producers on notice that it expects an elimination of virtually all salmonella bacteria in peanut products.
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