Orlando Injury Lawyer Blog

Federal health officials are trying to prevent injury from food poisoning and food contamination by finding the source of salmonella-tainted tomatoes. While they continue to search, the federal workers believe that they are getting very close to identifying the outbreak's source.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, the outbreak, which has sickened 167 people in 17 states since April, is not over even though it has been two weeks since the last confirmed case of a person falling ill. That’s because state and local health departments still are investigating possibly more recent infections.

As Orlando injury lawyers, we know it is often difficult for the FDA to protect consumers from contaminated foods and outbreaks. Despite the FDA’s warning system. people with food poisoning don't always go to the doctor, or have a stool sample analyzed. Indeed, when they do, getting laboratory test results can take two to three weeks. Then health officials must spot a pattern of illness.

The FDA has warned consumers against eating certain raw tomatoes: red plum, red Roma or round. Grape and cherry tomatoes or tomatoes still attached to the vine aren't linked to the illnesses. Also ruled safe are tomatoes from more than 30 states or countries, including part but not all of major producer Florida, where some counties have been cleared but not others. The FDA can rule out as suspects farms and distributors that weren't harvesting or selling when the outbreak began.

With all the food poisoning and food safety issues of late, the Food and Drug Administration came under heavy criticism by a House panel for its handling of recent food-safety violations. In addition, the administration has disclosed plans to establish a working group to review the safety of food and other imports. Of course, this should have been done sooner.

With concern mounting because of recent incidents involving not only tainted food but also toothpaste, tires and other products from China, a White House official said the administration is forming a panel on import safety to be chaired by Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt that will include other Cabinet officers.

The FDA inspects less than 1 percent of the imported food it is responsible for monitoring -- including seafood, fruits and vegetables -- and only a small fraction of those inspections include taking samples of products for testing, subcommittee investigators found. In San Francisco, FDA employees who review hundreds of shipments a day have an average of 30 seconds to decide whether each needs further investigation, according to subcommittee investigators.

Last month, the FDA began requiring Chinese importers of five types of seafood, including catfish, to show that their products had been tested for banned antibiotics. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, about 13 percent of the average American's diet is imported food, and imports of FDA-regulated food have more than doubled since 2000, to 9 million shipments in 2006. That includes a 350 percent increase in the value of U.S. imports of Chinese agricultural and seafood products, from $880 million in 1996 to $4 billion in 2006.

Hopefully, significant changes will result and food safety will receive the attention it deserves. Too many innocent people suffer when the government fails to maintain appropriate over-sight of our food supply. Unfortunately, there have been too many incidents to trust food safety to the food suppliers and the food industry.

As Orlando injury lawyers handling food poisoning and food contamination cases, we are keeping an eye on food safety legislation. Spurred by deadly outbreaks of E. coli and other food-borne pathogens, a group of U.S. lawmakers is pushing to put all food safety oversight under a single federal agency.

The Food Safety Act of 2007 would create a Food Safety Administration responsible for ensuring the security of the food supply from all forms of contamination. The proposed legislation comes on the heels of a number of widespread outbreaks of food-borne illness.
An E. coli outbreak in spinach last year killed three people and sickened more than 200. The FDA has confirmed 22 outbreaks of E. coli O157 linked to fresh leafy greens (20 lettuce, 2 spinach) since 1995. Half of those were linked to bagged salads. Further fueling public concern, more than 400 people fell ill between last fall and this spring after eating peanut butter contaminated by salmonella spread by a sprinkler system.

In March, growing reports of sick and dying cats and dogs led to a recall of pet food whose maker had used melamine-laced food additives from China. Chickens and hogs that had consumed pet food remnants were withheld from slaughter for a time out of concerns about human melamine consumption.

Currently, 12 federal agencies and 35 laws govern food safety, often with overlapping jurisdictions and different priorities. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration play the biggest roles in making sure the food Americans eat is safe. The USDA oversees meat and poultry, while the FDA is responsible for eggs and produce. The lines are not always clear-cut. For example, cheese pizzas fall under the FDA, while pepperoni pizzas fall under the Department of Agriculture.

In January, the Government Accountability Office added federal oversight of food safety to its list of high risk programs in need of reform. The GAO urged Congress to consider change before public health and safety is seriously compromised. Further, recurring outbreaks linked to produce prompted a number of congressional hearings on food safety in recent months, but even the biggest proponents of overhauling government oversight of the food supply are not predicting passage of the Safe Food Act this year. As with anything in Washington, things take time. For now, we are encouraged by the focus on prevention of food poisoning and food contamination by improving the oversight of food safety by the federal government.

We recently met with another victim of food contamination in Orlando. Unaware of the recall, unsuspecting parents were making snacks for their small child from Great Value jars of peanut butter. Fortunately, they learned that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported that ConAgra Foods' Peter Pan and Great Value brand peanut butter has salmonella contamination. The CDC formally reported the presence of the dangerous germ in peanut butter from opened jars from people sickened in New York, Oklahoma and Iowa. All three tested positive for salmonella.

ConAgra Foods Inc. earlier this month recalled all Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter made at its Sylvester, Georgia, plant after federal health officials linked the product to a salmonella outbreak that has sickened at least 329 people from 41 states since August.

The Oklahoma Department of Health reported recovering seven peanut butter jars from 11 cases confirmed by the state, and found the strain of salmonella in at least one. Iowa's Department of Health positively matched a peanut butter jar from one of the state's six confirmed cases. At least 51 people were hospitalized with symptoms of the disease between August 1 and February 2, with 60 percent of illnesses beginning after Dec. 1, according to the CDC.

Salmonella, which commonly originates from the feces of birds and animals, sickens about 40,000 people a year in the United States and kills about 600. It can cause diarrhea, fever, dehydration, abdominal pain and vomiting.

Government and industry officials have said the contamination may have been caused by dirty jars or equipment. Peanuts are usually heated to high, germ-killing temperatures during the manufacturing process. The only known salmonella outbreak in peanut butter -- in Australia during the mid-1990s -- was attributed to unsanitary plant conditions.

The Sylvester plant is the sole maker of the nationally distributed Peter Pan brand, and the recall covers all peanut butter produced by the plant since May 2006. Shoppers are being asked to toss out jars having a product code on the lid beginning with "2111," which denotes the plant. The jars or their lids can be returned to the store where they were purchased for a refund. Great Value peanut butter is a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. house brand made by several manufacturers. Great Value peanut butter that does not have the "2111" code is not included in the recall.

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