Beef recalls particularly concern us, followed by recalls of chicken, fresh fruit and vegetables and dairy products. Read other findings from this survey.

These survey results aren’t shocking in light of all the recalls in the news. Average Americans don’t have time to keep up with the details in this FDA recall archive, so sometimes we give up products instead.

Last year the FDA instructed us to trash the spinach if it came from Metz Fresh, whose leafy greens tested positive for salmonella. Earlier this year we may have skipped the beef after watching a depressing video of animal abuse at Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. The following month, manufacturers recalled bacteria contaminated chicken. Now we’re rightfully worried about salmonella laden tomatoes, as more people get sick. Not even our pets are immune to foodborne illness; an estimated 1,500 pets died and thousands more became ill after eating food with contaminated wheat gluten grown in China.

“Simply put, our food-safety system is broken,” said David Kessler, who ran the FDA for seven years.

The reality is that there is currently no mandate, no leadership, no resources, nor scientific research base for prevention of food-safety problems.

In the future, Americans may buy more local. Nearly nine out of ten of us would like to see more locally produced fruits and vegetables at retailers and two-thirds are willing to pay slightly more for such produce. Expat Chef at Eat Local Challenge writes: “I’ve just got one phone call to make directly to the farmer who grew it. And that’s nice to know.”

FDA officials said they still aren’t sure of the source of these suspect tomatoes, leaving us feeling like we can’t eat any tomatoes, anywhere.

If the FDA oversees 25 cents per every dollar we spend annually, we should have the ease of knowing these items are safe and that we won’t die because of them.

Two days after the tomato recall, the FDA requested an additional $275 million from Congress to help improve food safety. Representative Bart Stupak called the funding “a step in the right direction.” Dr. Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics called this amount “a pittance.” Yet this request came months after the recommendation by advisors, lawmakers, and groups like Consumers Union who argue the FDA needs new authority and greater resources to better ensure the safety of our food and drug supply. And unfortunately, we may have to wait until 2009 to see the effects of boosted FDA funding.

“The grave problem with [delayed payment] is that the FDA has become a joke,” said Senator Arlen Specter, as reported by the Health Blog.

Let’s ensure that the attack of the killer tomatoes remains just a cheesy 1970’s horror film. Mealtime should be delicious, not a game of chance.

But I’m thinking the USDA should get a nod of its own in a special “worst” category for keeping secret the names of retailers who are supplied recalled beef. Or in the case of the Hallmark/Westland recall, the countless schools throughout the nation that likely fed the suspect beef to our children.

This bizarre USDA secrecy policy first got the public’s attention in December 2003, when the agency took several months to update consumers about the amount of recalled beef linked to a possible case of mad cow disease in the U.S. In addition to the foot dragging, the agency never told consumers which stores may have been selling the suspect meat.

In response to USDA secrecy, California passed a law in 2006 that allowed state health officials to disclose recall information to the public. The Hallmark/Westland recall put this California law to the test; California health authorities posted a partial list of California retailers of recalled meat consumers could access. But this meat was shipped across the country, so consumers outside of California were left in the dark. That’s why a coalition of groups, including Consumers Union, supports a rule change that would require the USDA to disclose the names of retailers involved in meat recalls. Tell your lawmakers to put an end to recall secrecy!

Not surprising again -- industry lobbyists don’t want you to have more information about recalls. The Wall Street Journal reported that industry reps were pressuring the USDA to narrow the scope of the Hallmark/Westland recall. And their efforts may have gone further. “The main impediment has been the White House Office of Management and Budget which is responsible for clearing major regulation changes. The food industry has effectively lobbied OMB thus far to prevent the implementation of this rule,” said Tony Corbo from Food & Water Watch.

As for the race for the Worst Company in America, Hallmark/Westland currently leads by a small margin over News Corp (Rupert Murdoch’s media behometh – but that’s another blog). Wonder what the tally would be if we could get the USDA and the Administration in the vote?

On Sunday the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the recall of 143 million pounds of beef after the Humane Society of the United States released troubling videos of cattle that were too weak to walk apparently being prodded to slaughter.

The USDA has not yet specified where that meat was distributed and sold, prompting CU and other groups to call on U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer to make that information public. In a letter sent late Wednesday, the groups also asked Schafer to enact a rule proposed two years ago that would open such information to consumers in the future.

"There's no law that requires the USDA to keep information on stores that sold recalled meat confidential," said Jean Halloran, director of the food policy initiatives at the national consumer advocacy group. "That's their own internal policy, and they can change it. In fact, they have been talking about changing it for the past two years—but they just haven't acted yet." (CU comments)

Traditionally, the USDA has kept information about schools, nursing homes, and retail outlets that receive meat involved in a recall secret from consumers and even from state health officials, unless the state agreed not to release the information to the public.

Two years ago, Consumers Union led a successful fight to circumvent USDA's secrecy policy, at least in California, by requiring producers and distributors of meat sold there to notify the state's Department of Public Health if their meat is recalled by USDA. California law now allows state health officials to release that information to the public. The law took effect July 1, 2007; the current huge recall is viewed as the first test of whether the new policy is actually working.

Early reviews are not promising. Elisa Odabashian, director of Consumers Union’s West Coast Office in San Francisco, said her inquiries suggest that state health officials still do not have detailed information on retail sales, and she expressed concern that some of the recalled beef might still be in the freezers of California schools.

"It does not appear that the new state law is working," said Odabashian, "and there's no excuse for that, particularly because this was a California meat producer that was subject to inspections by the California Department of Food and Agriculture."

The recalled meat was processed at Westland/Hallmark Meat in Chino, CA. Perhaps one-third of it went to federal food and nutrition programs—most of which probably wound up in school lunches.

The incident is the latest in a series of food safety failures, the CU advocates said. The current issue of Consumer Reports, which is published by the consumer group, carries an article on a recent rise in beef contaminated with E. coli. And a January 2007 report on bacterial contamination of chicken revealed that the chance of buying chicken carrying campylobacter or salmonella had jumped sharply from CR's analysis four years earlier.

There are no reports of illness linked to the latest recall, federal health officials emphasized. But the Consumers Union experts said that the incident highlights a gaping hole in the food safety net. "In this case, for over two years the inspectors at this plant failed to notice that 'downer' cows [those that could not stand and thus might be sick] were being sent into the food supply, which is not supposed to happen," says Halloran.

She and Odabashian say they hope the immense publicity surrounding the episode will force the government to change its policy. Says Odabashian: "This is a travesty. It's unfortunate that only this kind of incident gets people fired up enough to demand change."

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) conducted an undercover video investigation of the Hallmark Meat Packing plant, which supplies meat to Westland Meat Co. The video reveals graphic footage of the way animals were handled at this USDA award-winning Supplier of the Year.

Westland supplied over 27 million pounds of meat to schools and federal programs in 36 states. Was your community on the list?

“Downer” cows, too sick or weak to stand cannot enter the food supply under both California state and federal law. “Downer” cows may have Bovine Spongiform Encephalopthy (BSE), or mad cow disease, or they may spread bacterial diseases such as E. coli and salmonella, which make millions of Americans sick every year.

Several lawmakers have spoken publicly about the video’s content, including Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, who sent two letters to the USDA asking for further investigation of the food safety of ground beef in the National School Lunch Program. Said Durbin:

The apparent slaughter of sick and weak animals not only appears to violate the USDA regulations, but could be a danger to our nation’s food supply. These ‘downed’ animals are more easily contaminated and may carry diseases dangerous to consumers.

In response to the HSUS video, Westland President and Hallmark’s operations manager Steve Mendell told ABC7 news:
“We are shocked, saddened, and sickened by what we have seen today.”

Then to the Washington Post: “We have a massive humane treatment program here that we follow to the n {+t}{+h} degree, so this doesn’t even sound possible,” Mendell said. “I don’t stand out there all day, but to me it would be next to impossible.”

So if the slaughterhouse manager wasn’t around to see any law-breaking, where was the USDA inspector? With 7,800 pairs of eyes overseeing the 6,200 slaughterhouses and food processors across the nation, surely one of them would have caught it. Right?

Food safety expert, and former advisor to the FDA and the USDA, Dean Cliver, told the LA Times: “We rely on a system, and the system dropped the ball. Somebody ought to be asking some questions.” Although the USDA has yet to confirm that any downer cattle entered the food supply, the video and HSUS allegation of inhumane treatment prompted the agency to stop shipments and to shut down until it proves the animals are “humanely handled.”

Schools across the nation responded to the Westland beef suspension. California school authorities told their districts to stop using Westland meat and other beef products from unknown sources. New York City schools went burger-free.

The western producer newspaper, Capital Press, cautions that such severe violations of animal husbandry standards will shake consumer confidence:

If someone tries to skirt the law and disregards proper animal care practices, it reflects on everyone. Consumer confidence and trust are difficult to build, but they can vanish in an instant if people question the safety of their food. Scofflaws cannot be tolerated anywhere in agriculture. The quicker they are rooted out, the better for all concerned.

According to Wayne Pacelle, Humane Society President, lawmakers should do more to protect the food supply:

The USDA gets millions of dollars in taxpayer funds from Congress and the American people every year to inspect the plants and enforce the law. It’s a tough job to be sure, but the USDA should focus on investigating this plant and, in a larger sense, correcting its own procedures and policies that allowed these atrocious practices to occur—on the USDA’s watch, I might add.

Your thoughts?

Klinkenborg's objections are not based on health or safety, but rather the risks to plant and animal diversity and economic impacts on consumers and farmers. This is a viewpoint worth considering.

The labels most consumers have seen in stores were approved by FDA and represent the only way a producer who does not use artifical hormones can effectively communicate with consumers who do not want to consume dairy products made with artificial hormones.

If the Pennsylvania ruling is upheld and catches on, it will be a bad precedent for future labels relating to antibiotic use or cloning. Producers should have the right to tell the truth and consumers have the right to know.

Some cows are in fact given an artificial hormone, produced by Monsanto. Called recombinant bovine growth hormone (rbGH) or recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST), it is a genetically engineered drug designed to increase milk production. However, farmers who don't use the drug have discovered that many consumers actually prefer their milk produced the natural way, and are using their non-use of the hormone as a selling point.

We find the PDA's sudden prohibition against farmers telling consumers they are not using hormones to be surprising, to say the least. Some 13 years ago, when the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made its controversial decision to approve the hormone use, it also issued guidance specifically saying that dairies whose farmers didn’t use the artificial hormone could label their milk as “from cows not treated with rbST/rbGH.”

During the years since then, consumers have increasingly sought out milk from untreated cows. Recently, a significant number of stores and chains, including Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Krogers, and Publix, have begun offering milk and other dairy products labeled as coming from cows not treated with rbGH or rbST.

In late 2002 Monsanto asked the Maine Attorney General to declare "Our Farmer’s Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones" labels “misleading” but he refused. (See our letter to the Maine Attorney General, asking that he not grant Monsanto’s request). In 2007, Monsanto asked the FDA and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to take action against such labels, but they refused as well. In late August, the FTC wrote to Monsanto, “The FTC agrees with FDA that food companies may inform consumers in advertising, as in labeling, that they do not use rBST.” However, in the Governor and the Secretary of Agriculture of the state of Pennsylvania, Monsanto has apparently found a sympathetic ear.

Questions also remain about the safety of rbGH use, which FDA approved in 1993, but was rejected in Canada and the European Union (our op-ed on this issue can be found here):

I bet my Grandmother would have had something to say about US food industry and regulator efforts to address the safety of food imports – from China in particular. The Grocery Manufacture/Food Products Assn (GMA) proposal outlined in the October 12, 2007 Los Angeles Times Articles suggests that while the food industry is acknowledging risks with imports, their focus is on holding imports to a higher standard.

I bet my Grandmother would have had something to say about US food industry and regulator efforts to address the safety of food imports – from China in particular. The Grocery Manufacture/Food Products Assn (GMA) proposal outlined in the October 12, 2007 Los Angeles Times Articles suggests that while the food industry is acknowledging risks with imports, they are narrowly focused on holding imports to a higher standard and myopic about beefing up safety systems at home.

Consistent with my Grandmother’s skepticism, US Rep. Rosa DeLauro was quoted in the same article saying “I think there is real momentum for reform – addressing only a rising flood of imports but also the serious need to examine our entire food safety system here at home.”

To emphasize this point, an article that ran the same day in the Washington Post described Canada’s efforts to protect its residents from contaminated imports – from the US. Canada stepped up its leafy greens testing program and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is mandating that US food importers be part of California’s voluntary produce safety program.

Hmm, Canada may be on to something – mandating participation in a voluntary safety program…

The inspiration for this parody came from an article in the San Jose Mercury News. Consumers Union’s Elisa Odabashian summed it up nicely in her quote, “It’s not just the stuff that says “made in China.” It’s the stuff in the stuff that says “Made in the U.S.A.”

Odabashian went on to say, “We’re importing more and more of our food and we’re inspecting almost none of it.”

She had me from the point she started quoting blues lyrics. In this case, it was "Jake Walk Blues." So what does this have to do with Food safety? In short, Jake was a 1920's and 30's adulterated patent medicine that caused approximately 50,000 men to suffering permanent paralysis. The signature paralyzed leg walk became know as “Jake Foot” or “Jake Legs”.

Cracking down on the hucksters responsible for shilling the poison is one of several bright spots in the agency's history. Friedman recounts this history as her lead in to “what happened to the FDA.” Whether one's interest is in food, drug or supplement safety, the article is a good read.

“Must pass” legislation like the Farm Bill which reauthorizes important agricultural programs and policies, tend to be magnets for special interest amendments. We have opposed several that we believe would have weakened our already troubled national strategy for food safety.

Consumers Union strongly supports the states’ role in the national food safety system. In fact, we opposed (successfully we hope) an earlier amendment to cut state authority over foods inspected by USDA. The current proposal would allow state inspected meat to be sold in interstate commerce – circumventing the federal food inspection act and experienced federal inspectors.

We believe states should supplement federal safety programs and should always be permitted to implement stronger programs, but we are cautious of proposals based upon “state’s rights” that would in fact result in undermining the national strategy.

Stay tuned as we monitor the progress of the Farm Bill and other laws and regulations relating to food safety.

The study adds to the ongoing debate between advocates of organic foods and critics claiming no significant difference other than costs. It would be interesting to find out if the study controlled for other behaviors that could have contributed to a difference in the quality of breast milk.

Dobbs cited Consumer Reports' national survey which found 92% of the American public in support of COOL. Read more about the Committee meeting here.