U.S. Food and Drug Administration - April 2000 Progress and Perspective Food Safety Initiative FY '99 Annual Report

Leading the Food Safety Initiative

(Table of Contents)

Susan Alpert, Ph.D., M.D.

For Susan Alpert, Ph.D., M.D., leading the Food Safety Initiative (FSI) is an opportunity to blend her background in medical microbiology, pediatrics and infectious diseases with 12 years experience as an FDA regulator, most recently as director of the Office of Device Evaluation in the Center for Devices and Radiological Health. Appointed Director of Food Safety for the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in October 1999, Alpert provides leadership for the Food Safety Initiative as well as providing oversight for all medical and clinical aspects of food safety across the broad range of FDA's food safety responsibilities.

Alpert is optimistic about the opportunity the Food Safety Initiative creates for improving the safety of the food supply. "Food safety has been an important issue for FDA from its beginning in 1906. The initiative is providing us with an opportunity to lift the floor because of focus, attention and resources. We need to take advantage of this opportunity," she said.

What does Alpert think about the current safety of the food supply? "We need to reduce drastically the level of illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths from foodborne illness," she said.

"Bacteria are smarter than people. We will never totally eliminate them from the food supply. Where we can reasonably improve food safety by decreasing bacterial contamination we should. The challenge is to evaluate the entire farm-to-table process and find the places where we can take steps to decrease pathogens. I expect to see accomplishments in the areas of technology, science, risk assessment and education."

Alpert is placing a priority on working with the medical community. Health care providers today are focusing on preventive measures people can take to keep themselves healthy she explained. The medical community has an important role to play in educating the public about nutrition, safe food handling and food risks.

Alpert intends to engage the medical community by focusing on the clinical aspects of foodborne illness supported by the statistics of foodborne illness. "Infants and young children are at higher risk than average healthy adults. In addition, we are increasingly a population of at risk individuals—seniors, the immunocompromised, and those with chronic illness. We need better reporting of foodborne illness and we need to look to the medical community to assist us. We want doctors to think about foodborne illness when they see diarrheal diseases and take a food history. Where that raises suspicion, they need to culture for foodborne bacteria and report the findings."

Alpert explained that through the PulseNet system bacterial isolates can be linked. "We need this data to make the whole food safety system work. Underreporting of foodborne illness is a serious problem," she said.

"We Americans are lucky that we do not have to contend with many of the problems that consumers in other parts of the world face. For example, there are limits on the use of pesticides here, and we do not have many of the diseases that occur in other parts of the world. By addressing the risks we know about, such as Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes and E. coli O157:H7, we can take a big bite out of foodborne illness," Alpert said.