By Richard Achen
repeatedly promised reforms.
Far too many times, poisoned food is not recalled until too late, Mr. Obama said last year. When I am president, it shall not be business as usual when it comes to food safety. I will provide additional money to hire more F.D.A. or Food and Drug Administration food inspectors.
Nearly all of the proposed legislation under consideration would require companies like the Peanut Corporation of America to lay out specific plans for manufacturing safely and testing routinely. The bills would require that test results and other records be made available to Food and Drug Administration inspectors upon demand, and would provide additional money for more intense inspections of domestic and foreign food manufacturers. Some would also repair the patchwork system by which outbreaks are detected.
Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, also propose creating a food agency independent of the F.D.A. or Food and Drug Administration so that food would receive single-minded attention. At present, at least 12 federal agencies regulate food safety. The battle between those who would strengthen the F.D.A. or Food and Drug Administration and those who would break it up will be an important fight this year.
I think I can prevail on the president to take a good fresh look at this, Mr. Durbin said. We can no longer forgive or explain whats happening with food safety in this country.
Neither the White House nor the Health and Human Services Department would say anything on Thursday. But the present peanut case, critics say, demonstrates just how very bad the system needs repairing, starting with the patchwork surveillance system that is the first indicator that something has gone extremely wrong.
Cases like Christophers are reported to local health departments, which in turn are to report them to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By mid-November, the disease centers had seen enough cases of a similar strain of salmonella to be concerned.
The numbers were not necessarily significant initially one here, one there, said Lola Russell, a disease centers spokeswoman. Over time, those numbers began to grow.
By mid-December, the Minnesota Department of Health, known as among the best in the U.S., had learned that nine individuals with salmonella poisoning. As a result, the departments Team Diarrhea, a team of graduate students who work nights, started contacting patients and their caregivers to question about their food choices .
We had a bunch of peanut-butter eaters, said Carlota Medus, a state epidemiologist. But none of the brand names were matching up well.
Other states were reporting similar cases, but as in Minnesota, no one could understand the shared food. The process is filled with uncertainty. State health officials ask people what they remember consuming in the days before they became ill. Poor recollection and bad records hamper these efforts, and officials are often sent on fruitless pursuits.
Having to wait is part of the problem. More than two weeks will often pass between the time someone is diagnosed with an illness and the result of a stool sample test is givin to Government officials.
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