Why does so much contaminated meat, fish and produce wind up in the U.S. food supply? A big part of the problem is that agencies that supposedly are a key line of defense — 2,800 state and local health departments across the country — often fail to detect tainted products.
According to a story by journalism students from the foundation-funded News21 program, weak surveillance by those regulators means that contaminated food outbreaks can keep spreading from one state to another before being detected. And, in some cases, the outbreaks never are identified by authorities.
The story, part of a News21 series on food safety, said that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention coordinates food contamination investigations when multi-state outbreaks occur. However, a CDC official said the agency can provide only “guidelines and recommendations” to the states, leading to inconsistent disease-reporting requirements and practices around the country.
For instance, speedy responses are critical for combating foodborne illnesses, yet 10 states allow doctors and hospitals a week to report a case of listeria to their health departments. In addition, the CDC recommends reporting for 20 foodborne illnesses, but fewer than half of the states require reporting to their health departments for all of them.
As a result, listeria, salmonella and E. coli pathogens, among others, persist in food that consumers buy before any recall is issued, sometimes leading to deadly outbreaks of food poisoning.
“There are multi-state outbreaks out there that we don’t recognize and we don’t know about,” said Tim Jones of Tennessee’s Health Department. “It’s just Russian roulette,” he added.
The harm caused by tainted food was underscored by a CDC announcement Friday that the death toll has risen to 21 from a nationwide outbreak of listeria in cantaloupes produced by Jensen Farms in Colorado. It has become deadliest U.S. foodborne illness outbreak in more than a decade
As The Associated Press reports, the latest deaths linked by the CDC to the tainted cantaloupe were in Indiana, New York and Wyoming. The agency said it knows of 109 people, including the 21 dead, who were sickened in the outbreak.
CDC officials have noted that the symptoms of listeria can take up to two months to emerge. They say more cases of illnesses are likely to be reported through this month.
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