The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has called for the most sweeping food safety rules in decades, in hopes of saving thousands of lives in the wake of deadly outbreaks in peanuts, cantaloupe and leafy greens.
The proposed rules would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food processors would have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.
In a statement Dec. 4, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law on which the rules are based "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common
goal."
The regulations could cost businesses close to half a billion dollars a year to implement, but are expected to reduce the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illnesses such as recent outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe that have been linked to more than
400 illnesses and perhaps seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.
In 2011, an outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, and FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this past year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.
Many food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several large-scale outbreaks. Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress and explain to the FDA how they would correct them. "The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.
The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost two million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before they take effect. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply -- meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect.
Smaller farms would have even longer to comply. The proposed rules came exactly two years after President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election.
Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.
