Oops! F.D.A. Error Is Talk of Henhouse
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: September 29, 2010
Don’t park too close to the henhouse!
Related
Times Topic: Egg Contamination and Recalls
A delay in sending safety inspectors to egg farms after this summer’s salmonella outbreak and egg recall can be traced in part to a parking mistake outside a pair of Pennsylvania henhouses, according to industry executives and state government officials.
Marilyn F. Balmer, a top egg expert for the Food and Drug Administration, was training inspectors in July to enforce the agency’s new egg safety rule when she parked the van she was driving near a henhouse at a farm in Manheim, Pa. She did it again during another session at a farm in Lancaster.
Ms. Balmer was in Pennsylvania to teach inspectors about how to keep germs away from poultry flocks, known as biosecurity. But the industry executives and state officials said she was breaking a basic biosecurity rule: keep vehicles, which may have driven through manure on rural roads or other farms, as far from the hens as possible.
At the Manheim farm, although the biosecurity breach was mentioned to Ms. Balmer, the van stayed where it was, according to a Pennsylvania state egg official, Kim Kennedy Barnham, who attended the training. In Lancaster, when Ms. Balmer was asked by the farm owner there, James Charles, to move the van, she refused. Finally, after Ms. Kennedy Barnham and an F.D.A. employee intervened, Ms. Balmer allowed the van to be moved.
But that was not all. Later in the day, Ms. Balmer and another instructor got into a heated argument in front of the trainees, according to egg industry executives briefed on the matter.
Ms. Balmer declined to comment.
All of that prompted the F.D.A. to re-evaluate the training program, contributing to a delay in preparing the inspectors to enforce the new safety rule. The rule went into effect July 12, but inspections began only last week at farms not involved in the recall.
The F.D.A. sent letters apologizing to Mr. Charles and the other Pennsylvania farmer (neither of whom were connected to the recall, which involved only eggs from Iowa). “Our employees’ disrespectful behavior was unprofessional and is a breach of good manners and our expectations,” the letters said.
Jeff Farrar, the head of food protection at the F.D.A., said the inspections were on track. “We are ready, we’re inspecting farms, we’re fully trained,” Mr. Farrar said. He would not identify Ms. Balmer by name, but said the person involved in the parking incident had been removed from the training program.
The first stop for the new round of inspections was Maine, where inspectors last week visited farms owned by Austin J. DeCoster, according to the farmer, who owns most of the Iowa farms that produced the recalled eggs.
Ms. Balmer’s parking problems were the talk of egg farmers across the country, many of them skittish over damage to the industry caused by the recall and anxious about F.D.A. inspectors coming onto their farms.
Dr. Nan Hanshaw, the chief of animal and poultry health for the Pennsylvania agriculture department, said the dust-up might have an upside.
“It’s a good training tool,” she said, “to actually show someone what not to do.” |
