The year of eating dangerously

By Stephen J. Hedges

A year ago, federal food safety experts from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture were scrambling to figure out how they'd missed so many food contamination warning signs. People and pets nationwide were falling ill and even dying from salmonella contamination in spinach and peanut butter, bad seafood, contaminated pet food ingredients from China and an alarmingly high number of cases involving E coli bacteria in ground beef.

Both agencies have spent the past year promising reforms and even making some. The FDA, which regulates everything but meat, poultry and egg products, has launched a new food safety plan. After a string of meat recalls, including the largest recall ever - 143 million pounds in February -- the USDA has conducted a review of meat packing plants.

But in the past year, contamination cases have continued, and some remain unsolved.

E coli cases are down this year, though a recall by Kroger supermarkets last week after illnesses were reported in Ohio and Michigan raised new questions about the effectiveness of the USDA's reforms..

The same can be said of the FDA, and new confusion over recent salmonella poisoning caused by the consumption of some tomatoes. The FDA back-peddled on the tomato contamination theory Friday, telling reporters that there's a chance that tomatoes may not be to blame at all. The more than 800 illnesses reported due to salmonella could have been caused by something else that's still out there.

There are more than a half dozen proposals in Congress that would bolster federal food inspection authority. But in the year of eating dangerously, Congress has yet to act on them.

Independent food safety experts say that the past especially-active year of food contamination cases and recalls has done little to change the way food is labeled, and what consumers are told about the products they're buying.

Kroger, despite complaints from victims' lawyers and consumer groups, still hasn't disclosed where it got the meat that is suspected of carrying E coli. It even takes some searching to find information about the recall on the company's website.

As for the bad tomatoes, the FDA has admitted that it may never figure out just where the salmonella came from. It has tested 1,700 of them and still hasn't found one that's contaminated.

"It's possible this investigation will not produce a smoking gun," said David Acheson, the FDA's food safety czar. "We need to look at all the possibilities."