July 7th, 2010
Repost from Rudy Westervelt (powerinlearning.com):
On July 1st, the FDA issued a Recall press release on Feline’s Pride Natural Chicken Formula Cat Food. This cat food had tested positive for Salmonella and could cause food borne illness in humans and animals.
The product being recalled is a raw product packed in 2.5 pound containers and frozen.
The product is thawed and served raw to cats and kittens.
Would you eat raw chicken? Don’t people know that raw chicken has a high probability of containing Salmonella or other bacteria that cause food borne illness.
Now this company promotes the product as being similar to raw mouse. Now growing up, I had cats who lived outside and certainly ate mice. However, I think that feeding your cat raw chicken increases the likelihood that they could get ill from ingesting Salmonella.
If the cat owner doesn’t handle this raw product carefully, it could cross-contaminate food intended to be eatend by the owner.
We need to do a better job of educating pet owners on the handling of foods destined for consumption by their pets. Do you think that the owners think that freezing kills bacteria?
Be informed. Read the labels. Understand what RAW means and handle food products accordingly.
Be safe for your pet’s health and your families health.
Rudy
Tags: Food trace, pet food, recall, salmonella
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February 25th, 2010
Way back in July of last year, the House passed the Food Safety Enhancement Act. A Senate version passed unanimous approval from committee in November. And improvement on food safety has been dead ever since. The current quagmire of health care reform and jobs bills has virtually paralyzed Washington. Meanwhile, recalls like the contaminated sausages in Rhode Island continue to be slow in tracing all impacted products. Rep Dingell recently asked the Senate to act. Please write your senator and tell them food safety is something they could easily all agree on.
Tags: Food safety, recall, senate, traceability
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January 17th, 2010
Another FDA recall release caught my eye.
PEO Chapter FO Recalls Roasted Hazelnuts Because of Possible Health Risk
http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm197816.htm
This was another hazelnut product potentially contaminated with salmonella. What was interesting to me was the statement, ‘The roasted Hazelnuts were packaged in 1 lb. plastic bags and labeled “Hazelnuts, Roasted $7.00″. No other codes, expiration date, or UPC is found on the package.’
Obviously with this kind of labeling, traceability is virtually impossible. We need a consistent, simple, lot coding standard that all food products follow so we can truly identify lots of product that are suspected to cause harm and get them out of the food supply chain.
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January 9th, 2010
Rudy Westervelt posted to Food Safety: You Need to Know a note about a recent FDA action. He stated:
The Food Production Daily news reported on a Nashville facility that had been warned about issues but had not corrected them. The FDA had warned the company in writing in May 2009. It detailed violations of Good Manufacturing Practices and lack of rodent and pest control measures. The facility received and stored bulk ingredients in route to restaurants.
In June, the company said that all issues were corrected. When a re-inspection occurred in November, there was “widespread rodent infestation in the building”, said the agency. The facility allowed birds, insects and rodents to enter at will.
US Federal marshalls seized over $1million worth of inventory.
Pretty scary. But what’s even worse in my mind is that between May and November, a lot of probably tained product went out to resturants…and we don’t have a very good way to trace it. It’s in our food. Scary.
Tags: food supply, Tainted food, traceability
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October 6th, 2009
In a recent release, Tom Vilsack responded to the NY Times story on a tragic case of E. coli food poisoning that has changed a poor girl’s life forever. Mr. Vilsack states the Obama Administration has been aggressive on food safety and we applaud that effort. But, I’d also ask that more focus be put on traceability. Let’s face it, we’d all like to see the number of incidents decrease with better practices and inspections, but when that fails (when, not if), let’s have a solid traceability system that can respond quickly.
Tags: E. coli, Food safety, Food trace
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June 3rd, 2009
Kraig R. Naasz, President & CEO of American Frozen Food Institute testified before the Subcommittee on Health of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, June 3, 2009. Regarding a discussion draft of the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 he stated, “…as written the traceability requirements are simply impracticable and could not be implemented by industry. The food supply chain is extremely complex, and there are no current technologies in existence that would enable manufacturers to fulfill the requirements called for by the draft bill.” I respectfully disagree. This is not rocket science, we can provide the traceability for improved food safety the bill calls for if we want to. I want to and would like to work with Mr Naasz and other industry leaders to make it workable.
For the draft bill see:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090526/fsea_draft.pdf
Tags: AFFI, Food safety, traceability
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May 22nd, 2009
GMA announced three food safety initiatives.
http://www.groceryretailonline.com/article.mvc/Grocery-Manufacturers-Association-Outlines-0001?VNETCOOKIE=NO
I think there needs to be one more: Traceability Modernization. Note that this is different than the Product Recall Modernization GMA is calling for. In focusing on recalls as produce people are doing with the PTI, they are not addressing the real traceability issue. Rather, they are using the GTIN system to standardize how to link trading partners. In the event of a recall, this helps in that upstream and downstream partners can be quickly identified, but the actual input/output mapping of lots and their components is still maintained by each individual company. If they happen to share information on a common system with a trading partner, some automated traceability can be provided, but there is no requirement as such. It’s amazing to me that nobody seems to be picking up on the fact that this is not real traceability. The WFT System is a major step forward in this area. By collecting the ingredient data for every output lot as encoded elements (no propriatary information is collected), we can provide the instantaneous traceability that others can’t. That’s what is really needed for food safety.
Tags: Food safety, GMA, recall, traceability
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May 12th, 2009
NEW YORK, May 11 (UPI) — Public health experts say food safety in the United States is vastly improved compared to a century ago despite recent outbreaks and product recalls.
http://www.foodservicedashboard.com/?p=4509
A century ago? I hope so. I’m hoping that we all have the good sense that using a century old measuring stick is not what we should rest easy on. Food safety in the US and indeed worldwide needs to be a priority. The CDC estimate of 76 million cases of food-borne illnesses in the U.S. today, with an estimated economic toll of $6.9 billion might be better than 1909 was, or even 1999 if they meant 10yrs, but we CAN do better and we should.
Tags: Food safety, product recalls
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May 11th, 2009
The last recall posting (hopefully) on the FDA site from the Peanut Corporation of Americal product recall was April 30. I tried to keep track and counted 474 recalls relating to this incident. Remember the outbreak started in Oct 2008. Recalls were heavy in Feb 2009 but continued through April. This shows the need for a traceability system like what we are proposing with www.worldfoodtrace.org.
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