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Promising Trends in Food Safety |
by Bernard Schwetz, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Acting Principal Deputy Commisioner of Food and Drugs
With dramatic changes in food production and distribution methods, consumption patterns, and demographics in the United States in recent years, FDA is faced with constantly evolving challenges in fulfilling its public health mission of ensuring the safety of the nation's food supply.
In the face of mounting challenges -- including a growing list of known foodborne pathogens in recent years -- FDA's perpetual scientific vigilance, enhancements to the agency's surveillance, outbreak response, prevention and education programs, and in particular the agency's collaborations with expert partners inside and outside of the government are paying off. Recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) point to a substantial decline in foodborne illness from a number of pathogens from 1996 to 2000. Additional data indicate that there have been significant improvements in recent years, too, in food safety-related consumer behaviors -- less people eating risky raw foods and more people washing hands and cutting boards to prevent dangerous cross-contamination between foods, for example.
This Food Safety Progress Report focuses on important achievements last fiscal year aimed at reducing foodborne illness. Following up on the hopeful trends disclosed by recent foodborne illness surveys, FDA must extend this positive course over the long term by continually seeking ways to more quickly identify problems, find the sources of foodborne illnesses or contamination, and convey our knowledge to the public.
Prevention will remain the cornerstone of the agency's plan to reduce foodborne illness in this country, and a strong science base is, in turn, the key to prevention. As an FDA scientist who has served as FDA's Senior Advisor for Science and as Director of the agency's National Center for Toxicological Research before being appointed to my current post, I have a particular appreciation for the scientific know-how that informs FDA's public health policies. It's this strong scientific base that allows us to confidently and competently serve as guardians of the public health.
Despite all of the extraordinary scientific advances made in recent years to help fight foodborne diseases, some of which are highlighted in this report, there are still too many illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths resulting from contaminated food. According to recent statistics from the CDC, foodborne pathogens cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths each year in the United States. To turn those numbers around, FDA is committed to remaining on the cutting edge of science to lay the groundwork for regulatory decisions made in the best interests of the public health.
For their work in FY 2000 toward achieving a safer food supply, I want to extend my thanks to all the FDA staff involved in the agency's food safety efforts, whose hard work is responsible for the impressive achievements. And I want to express my great respect for the effective leadership of Joseph Levitt, Director, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition; Dennis Baker, Associate Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs; Stephen Sundlof, D.V.M., Ph.D., Director, Center for Veterinary Medicine; and Daniel Casciano, Ph.D., Director, National Center for Toxicological Research.
Highlights of FDA's Food Safety Accomplishments in FY 2000 |
Fiscal year 2000 was a year of important advancements in food safety. Here are summarized some of FDA's most consequential food safety achievements in that year.
- The science that is at the heart of FDA decisionmaking was advanced substantially in FY 2000, through a variety of independent and collaborative projects. For example, FDA developed improved methods for detecting and/or characterizing pathogens such as Cyclospora and E. coli and developed draft risk assessments on public health risks associated with Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat foods and Vibrio parahaemolyticus in raw oysters.
- For farm-to-table regulatory initiatives, the volume of "high-risk" food inspections in the United States nearly doubled in FY 2000 from the previous year, as did the number of international inspections. Eggs and sprouts were among the foods on which FDA focused its food safety efforts in that year. The agency completed a survey of imported produce and followed up by embarking on a complementary sampling assignment for domestic produce. And huge strides were taken to ensure "HACCP" principles are applied so as to best protect consumers of juice and seafood products.
- FY 2000 also saw evidence of declines in foodborne illness since new food safety programs were adopted, thanks in large part to food safety surveillance tools such as "PulseNet," "FoodNet" and the "National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring Network." In that year, too, FDA substantially furthered its understanding of the human impact of antimicrobial resistance in animals.
- Physicians and consumers, grade school children and seniors all benefited from food safety materials developed by FDA in FY 2000. For seniors, the agency launched a food safety education campaign with print and video components. Fifty teachers from across the United States participated in a food safety program, co-sponsored by FDA and the National Science Teachers Association, that prepared them to teach their students about food science. And the "Fight BAC!" campaign reached across the country to remind people of all ages of proper food safety practices.
- Chile, New Zealand, Nicaragua and the United States itself were among the more than 30 countries whose representatives learned about FDA's food safety programs in FY 2000. Good agricultural practices and identifying food contamination sources were among the topics that took center-stage.
Subsequent sections of this report address, in some detail, these and many other significant accomplishments.
Big-Picture View of Food Safety |
An Interview with Louis Carson
Following development of the government's Farm-to-Table Food Safety Strategy in 1997, Congress provided FDA with increased funding for food safety in fiscal years 1998, 1999 and 2000.
Louis Carson, who has been a food safety leader in FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition that entire time, gives the agency's perspective on what has been made possible with extra funds dedicated to food safety and what challenges he anticipates in the future.
Q: Has the boost in food safety resources changed the way FDA -- particularly its Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition -- does business?
A: The increased resources have definitely changed the way CFSAN conducts its business of ensuring a safe food supply. They have allowed us to focus our attention on the big-picture public health goal of reducing foodborne illness and away from our day-to-day view of our jobs doing research, writing papers, managing risk and so on. We have been able to focus our attention much more on a comprehensive "farm-to-table" approach for achieving our food safety goals, and on recognizing that to achieve the most successful outcome in response to a problem, industry, regulators and the scientific community need to address each segment of the farm-to-table continuum, including farms, processing plants, means of transportation and food service establishments.
Lastly, FDA has really been able, in recent years, to focus on prevention. We often are engulfed in reacting to existing problems, but the additional resources have enabled us to really think about preventing foodborne illnesses and to spend time and energy in reaching out to industry, academia and other governments and cooperating on ways to prevent foodborne illnesses from occurring. I think our ultimate success will really be a consequence of those preventive controls, which our scientists, investigators and others are constantly developing.
Q: Has this new way of viewing food safety had real effects on the safety of the U.S. food supply and consumers' health?
A: I think there have been some real, practical successes resulting in consumer health benefits. Our progress toward minimizing foodborne illness has been confirmed by the CDC's FoodNet system, a measurement tool that has shown a significant drop in foodborne illness in objective terms. The decline followed a joint prevention effort by industry and federal and state food safety agencies, and has shown that we can make a difference in the public health. So when consumers go to their grocery stores, I think they can have greater confidence that the foods they're selecting are being produced by industry in a safe, wholesome and nutritious manner, and that the government infrastructure is there to assure that's truly happening.
I think, also, that we have advanced the public health with our education efforts targeted to consumers and, in particular, those consumers who are susceptible to certain risks, by giving them the information they can use to make informed choices. We have had the opportunity to develop education materials that reach at-risk people _ those who are immunocompromised or very young or very old -- with specific messages about how they can play a personal role in helping to reduce foodborne illness. We have produced a video targeted to seniors, for example, that I think is effective in educating them about how they should handle food to avoid getting sick.
Also, we've taken great strides forward in our public-private partnerships with industry, academia and federal and state governments in putting forth four simple food safety messages for consumers -- cook, clean, chill, and don't cross-contaminate -- that in my view are the most powerful tools in helping consumers ensure that food they prepare is safe for them and their families.
Q: In today's global economy, has FDA changed the way it looks at food produced outside the United States for import into this country?
A: In recent years, FDA's food safety program has focused needed attention on making sure that imported foods meet the same standards of safety as food produced domestically. After all, foods produced in foreign countries have the potential to visit the same unwelcome consequences on those who eat them as foods produced in the United States, and the opportunity for illnesses from imported products has been on the rise as Americans increase their consumption of internationally grown fruits and vegetables and other imported food products.
To reduce the chance that problem products will land on the breakfast, lunch or dinner plates of American consumers, FDA today applies a wide range of tools -- among them, increased foreign inspections; educational and technical outreach targeted to foreign producers and governments; the development of "mutual recognition agreements" that achieve high safety and quality standards while promoting trade; participation in international standard-setting forums such as Codex Alimentarius; and establishment of international data bases with a global focus on health risks.
At the U.S. border, an automated, risk-based system of screening food products guides FDA's monitoring of imported foods. While most products proceed into the United States quickly, those products that present more risk have to go through more in-depth screening.
This review system helps FDA to identify the small percentage of would-be imports at the border that do require direct examination. Some firms or products with poor compliance histories can be detained at the border without physical examination until the importer can prove the product complies with FDA standards.
With this multi-pronged safety net in place, FDA seeks to ensure that the food Americans eat and serve to their families consistently meets the highest safety standards.
Q: Looking ahead over the next several years, what do you hope will be accomplished in the food safety arena?
A: My hope is that the efforts we've initiated will be sustained. I think so often that when you embark on a program, people have a short-term view that it's immediate successes they're after, and that once those short-term goals are realized, there is no more to be done. I think what we know about foodborne pathogens and bacteria is that we need to stay constantly vigilant because of their ability to adapt to once-effective interventions. Just look at E. coli: a number of years ago that specific pathogen didn't present a problem, but now we have found that it has produced a different pathogenic strain, 0157, that we must confront.
The food safety program itself will undergo a big change in the year 2002, when the program, which started out by addressing foodborne illnesses associated with microbiological bacteria, will be expanded to cover chemical and physical food hazards, as well. So consideration will be given to the full complement of potential hazards, and to implementing expanded measures to reduce foodborne illness, both acute and chronic. With chemical hazards like pesticides, dioxins or methylmercury tending to be of a more chronic nature than bacterial ones, we will only see the positive impact of our efforts after many years. Nonetheless, if surveillance efforts by FDA and its sister agencies show that our efforts are reducing a contaminant in the environment, then we know our food supply will have a correspondingly lower level. Then we can expect to see the ultimate payoff in the way of improved public health, as we've already seen in our fight against foodborne bacteria.