INTERESTING ARTICLE:
New dangers make way to US tables
In age of globalization, a bountiful supply means fewer controls
on purity
By Stan Grossfeld, Globe Staff, 09/20/98
In the '50s, we were told that red meat was good for us. By the
cholesterol-clogged '90s, the health mantra was to eat more fresh
fruits and vegetables.
But a new congressionally mandated report warns that eating too many raw
or minimally processed fruits and vegetables is risky. Confused? Just ask
Laura Biddle, a minister and mother of three from Topsfield who loves fresh
fruit and vegetables. After contracting the parasite cyclospora in April 1997,
however, she looks at produce differently. ''I seriously thought I was dying,
that my insides were falling out,'' she said.
Biddle said she became nauseated after eating raspberries and strawberries
bought at a food stand in Boston. She was listless, suffered cramps and
diarrhea and lost 10 pounds. It took nearly three months for doctors to
figure out what was wrong with her, but with the help of sulfa drugs she has
fully recovered.
Others are not so lucky. At least 30 million cases of food-borne illnesses
cause up to 9,100 deaths annually in the United States, mostly to children
and the elderly, according to a 1996 report by Congress's General
Accounting Office. Pathogenic microorganisms, toxic chemicals naturally
present in food, pesticide residues, and food additives, are main causes of
food illness.
Despite recent improvements, the US food safety system is ''inconsistent,
uneven and at times archaic,'' according to a July report, ''Ensuring Safe
Food,'' prepared for Congress by the Institute of Medicine and National
Research Council, a Washington-based nonprofit group.
Of special recent concern have been cases of meat contamination from E.
coli bacteria, and the June outbreak of salmonella from breakfast cereal that
made 200 people in 11 states sick. Medical costs and productivity losses
have been estimated at up to $37.1 billion a year, according to the US
Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.
Despite improvements in food quality over the years, bacteria are adapting
and evolving into more virulent forms, according to food saftey specialists.
''The big issue is not what we know is on food, but what we don't know is
on food,'' said Caroline Smith De Waal, director of the Washington-based
Center for Science in the Public Interest, a health advocacy organization.
''Globalization of the food system brings food from all over the world into the
US marketplace, and with it the potential for food-borne infection or other
hazards not normally found in the United States,'' according to the ''Ensuring
Safe Food'' report.
The US food safety system is facing ''tremendous pressures'' to maintain
adequate oversight of the imported food boom, especially with regard to
produce, the report, said. It also cited outdated safety laws, a fragmented
federal regulatory structure (12 federal agencies are responsible for
implementing 35 food safety statutes) and the availability of new food
choices as factors placing further strains on food safety.
And an April report by the General Accounting Office concluded that
federal regulatory efforts in food safety are inconsistent and unreliable. The
report warned that ''federal agencies cannot ensure that the growing volume
of imported foods is safe for consumers.''
According to the GAO report, the number of imported food entries into the
United States more than doubled between 1992 and 1997, from 1.1 million
to 2.7 million. Yet Food and Drug Administration inspections declined from
8 percent of the total imports to less than 2 percent during the same period.
In July, President Clinton, who has proclaimed the US food supply ''the
most bountiful and safest in the world,'' proposed a $101 million food safety
initiative to pay for 225 new FDA adminstrators and inspectors, and to
establish a new institute for food safety research. But a food fight is brewing
in Congress, where the House has only approved $16.8 million of the
amount Clinton wants, while the Senate has approved $68 million. A
conference committee is scheduled to meet this month to forge a
compromise.
The United States food supply has changed greatly in the last generation,
when 70 percent of foodstuffs were produced within 100 miles of home.
Now supermarkets carry items from all around the world.
''How can we say we have the world's safest food supply when what we
have is food from all over the world,'' said Dr. Michael Osterholm,
epidemiologist of the Minnesota Health Department, and a leading
food-safety specialist.
Health officials warn that Americans have a false sense of security when it
comes to food. They travel to Mexico and refuse to eat raw fruit and
vegetables, then return home and buy the same fruits and vegetables at their
local supermarkets.
In addition, eating habits have changed. ''Half of the food dollar is spent
outside the home,'' said Osterholm. ''Food service is the lowest-paid rung on
the ladder. These people have no health insurance. They may not speak the
language, and if they have an infectious disease and don't wash their hands,
you've got a problem.''
Relying on port-of-entry inspections to detect unsafe food is ''ineffective,''
the GAO report said. ''This approach does not ensure that foods are
produced under adequate conditions.''
The FDA admits that inspections don't detect some organisms, such as the
cyclospora outbreaks from Guatemalan raspberries that sickened nearly
2,500 people in 20 states and Canada in 1997 and 1998.
In addition, a 1997 outbreak of hepatitis A from frozen strawberries
imported from Mexico sickened 270 people in five states, including 130
children in Michigan. And in 1987, an outbreak of salmonella from
cantaloupes imported from Mexico caused more than 25,000 illnesses.
The FDA's spokesman in Phoenix, Gil Meza, said the agency also does not
routinely test for life-threatening microbial contamination on fruits and
vegetables. ''Historically, it hasn't been an issue until all the various outbreaks
we've had in the last five years,'' Meza said. ''We're taking another look at
it.''
Despite increased media and government awareness campaigns, most
Americans don't know a lot about common food- borne pathogens.
For example, campylobacter jejuni, commonly found in chicken intestines, is
now considered the leading cause of food-borne bacterial infection and the
second biggest food-borne killer, behind salmonella, according to the US
Centers for Disease Control. It infects 4 million Americans a year.
Just call it a bachelor's disease. ''It affects a lot of young men who go out
into the world and end up infecting themselves,'' by undercooking chicken,
said Dr. Paul Mead an epidemiologist at the CDC.
Although far less known than its fellow pathogen E. coli, campylobacter
jejuni causes diarrhea and in rare instances Guillain-Barre syndrome, a
potentially fatal autoimmune disease.
''E. coli causes outbreaks and grabs headlines,'' said Mead. ''Campylobacter
is more sporadic.''
Illnesses caused by salmonella, found in eggs, poultry and fresh produce,
have doubled in the last 20 years, according to the CDC. Several strains of
salmonella are now resistant to antibiotics. Neither campylobacter nor E. coli
were even identified as human health hazards until the late 1970s, the CDC
said. Harmful bacteria also are finding new modes of transmission. While E.
coli is normally linked to undercooked ground beef, it has also been traced
to raw milk, lettuce, and unpasteurized apple cider.
After getting sick last year, the trust Laura Biddle had that her food is safe is
gone forever.
''I'm so much more concerned about what my children eat and where the
food comes from,'' she said. ''It's scary. You think you're getting something
fresh, but it's not labeled, and at the downtown fruit stands you can't touch it.
The CDC told me even if the fruit was washed I still would have gotten
cyclospora. Now, when the kids tell me they want raspberries, I take them
to one of those pick-them-yourself places.'' |
