Chairman Henry A. Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak today sent a letter to Austin DeCoster, the owner of Wright County Egg, regarding records obtained by the Committee indicating that the company tested positive for Salmonella contamination in its Iowa facilities prior to the recent widespread outbreak of Salmonella-related illnesses.
In the letter, the
I will be heading back to the States on Tuesday a 1:00 PM from Auckland and will arrive in Seattle on Tuesday at 11:00 AM (I was going to go straight to Washington D.C., but that has been put off for a week). Prior to my at the NZ Food Safety Authority’s national conference, I had the chance to be on TVNZ for their early show. A few pithy quotes:
“E. coli, campylobacter, salmonella can cause devastating illnesses that cost families and loved ones.”
“So whether you’re manufacturing food for your own population or for export – it’s really important that you get it right.”
“We like to do things big in the US. There are 62 million chickens just in Iowa. So if a chicken factory has a little problem it gets amplified very quickly.”
I also had time to pen my weekly Publishers Platform for Food Safety News:
“Good Day” from a day ahead of any point in the United States from the Tongariro Lodge on the North Island of New Zealand. As I write this, I am sitting under a stuffed 8½ pound Rainbow Trout caught in 1984 by then ex-president Jimmy Carter on the same river my daughter and I fished the last to days – that was after we bungy jumped off a bridge that, well, was far too high above another river.
There is nothing like seeing a fish caught by the first President that I was old enough to vote for (I was 19 in 1976), or perhaps it was jumping off a bridge, to focus your attention on how quickly the years stack up. So, how do I turn Jimmy Carter into something about food safety? Let’s see if I can do this?Continue Reading A few days in New Zealand talking food safety
Good Saturday from New Zealand. This just dropped into my inbox from the CDC:
• From May 1 to August 31, 2010, approximately 1,519 illnesses were reported that are likely to be associated with this outbreak.
• FDA identified Salmonella with PFGE patterns indistinguishable from the outbreak strain in egg farm environmental samples.
•
Senator Grassley was quoted in the Wall Street Journal today – “Just because food safety isn’t ‘my job’ doesn’t mean it should be ignored.” I may not agree with him on most things, but on this one, he and I seem to see eye to eye. I just may stop putting my money on the Democrats. Here is why.
Last week Alison Young at USA Today reported that “[at]hough USDA says its authority was limited, the agency’s egg graders were at Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms at least 40 hours a week — including before the outbreak — inspecting the size and quality of eggs inside processing buildings.”
However, “USDA regulations say buildings and “outside premises” must be free of conditions that harbor vermin, but the agency takes a narrow view of its responsibilities. Under the USDA’s unwritten interpretation of the regulations, egg graders only look for vermin inside the specific processing building where they are based, said Dean Kastner, an assistant USDA branch chief in poultry grading program.”
This is what the FDA found when it finally entered the Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms:Continue Reading I have found something I agree with Senator Grassley about – the USDA needs to do its damn job
My bet to the chagrin of some 200 California restaurants, Kern County published a list today of the the restaurants that received the tainted eggs from Wright County Eggs and Hillandale Farms. You must wonder if the restaurants will be asking a few more questions of their suppliers in the future? Here is the Salmonella
After my speech today at the 3rd Annual Australian Food Safety Conference, several people approached me trying to understand the scope of 550,000,000 eggs being recalled in the US and some 1,500 people sickened with Salmonella Enteritidis. They asked politely (as Australian’s do) if it was true that the “farms” had never been inspected by
Thinking I had to be up at 4:30 AM this morning to participate in a phone conference (it is actually Friday morning – I’m a day ahead here in Australia), I awoke at 3:30 AM to Mary Clare Jalonick’s article about Stewart Parnell’s new job – consulting for the peanut industry – REALLY? Her best
In the morning we will petition the Iowa Federal Court for entrance to the Iowa egg farm responsible for the massive egg recall and nationwide outbreak of Salmonella.
A ‘Rule 34’ inspection – named for its position in the civil code – is a request for entry into a facility for purposes of inspection and
When Cargill Meat Solutions and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) recalled approximately 8,500 pounds of ground beef products that was contaminated with E. coli O26 just after midnight on August 28, 2010, I was convinced that it was a plot to get bad news out when no one
Although food poisoning is a prevalent issue in Australia and New Zealand, both countries have taken major legislative efforts over the past decade to better regulate and enforce food and hygiene standards. Although both have similar food regulations, they have different legal regimes that treat food poisoning cases differently. In Australia, food law is dealt with mostly through tortious negligence and statutory claims. These claims were substantially altered through major tort reform in 2002, completed on a state/territory level. In New Zealand, tort law was largely abandoned in the 1970s, and food poisoning cases are mostly dealt with as a regulatory matter; with local health units investigating claims and rewarding small amounts of compensation to victims. Despite these differences in how victims pursue claims, Australia and New Zealand created a joint bilateral Food Standards Authority to develop and administer a common code of regulations, which have been incorporated into local law.Continue Reading My view of Food Poisoning Law in Australia and New Zealand
