Christopher Meunier, 7, hadn’t been very ill since he was a toddler, but in late November, he suddenly had a high fever and bloody diarrhea and started throwing up.
He was just in severe agony, said his mother, Gabrielle Meunier of South Burlington, Vt. He said, ‘It hurts so bad, I want to die’ something you don’t expect to hear out of a 7-year-old’s mouth.
In the hospital for six days, Christopher had salmonella poisoning, making him one of more than 500 individuals poisoned across the country after eating peanut butter or peanut products made at a P.C.A. or Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Ga.
The F.D.A. or Food and Drug Administration has alleged that the company knowingly sent out contaminated items to some of the most enormous food makers in the country from a plant that was never designed to make peanut butter safely, causing one of the largest product recalls in history. The company responded that it disagreed with some of the agency’s findings and that it had taken extraordinary measures to identify and recall all products that have been identified as presenting a potential risk.
Food scares have become as well known as Midwestern tornadoes. Cantaloupes, jalapeños, lettuce, spinach and tomatoes have all been subject to major recalls in past years. And a fast growing list of producers and trade associations joined consumer advocates in begging for stricter regulations calls that the Bush administration largely rejected.
A clutch of legislative proposed measures this year would deliver repairs to the system, and people offering those proposed measures expect President Obama to back them because, as a candidate, he [continuously promised reforms.
Far too many times, tainted food is not recalled until too late, Mr. Obama said last year. When I become president, it will not be business as usual when it comes down to food safety. I will provide additional finances to hire more F.D.A. or Food and Drug Administration food inspectors.
Nearly all of the proposed legislation under consideration would require companies like the Peanut Corporation of America to lay out specific plans for manufacturing safely and testing routinely. The bills would require that test results and other records be made available to Government inspectors upon demand, and would provide additional money for more intense inspections of domestic and foreign food producers. Some would also fix the patchwork system by which outbreaks are detected.
Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, also propose creating a food agency independent of the Food and Drug Administration so that food would receive individual attention. At present, at least 12 federal agencies regulate food safety. The battle between those who would strengthen the Food and Drug Administration and those who would break it up will be an important fight this year.
I think I can prevail on the president to take a fresh look at this, Mr. Durbin said. We can no longer forgive or explain what’s happening with food safety in the U.S..
Not the White House nor the Health and Human Services Department would comment on Thursday. But the recent issue, critics say, demonstrates just how very bad the system needs repairing, beginning with the patchwork surveillance system that is the first indicator that something has gone extremely wrong.
Issues like Christopher’s are reported to local health departments, which in turn are to report them to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By mid-November, the disease centers had seen enough cases of a similar strain of salmonella to be concerned.
The numbers were not necessarily significant initially one here, one there, said Lola Russell, a disease centers spokeswoman. Over time, those numbers began to rise.
By the middle of December, the Minnesota Department of Health, known as among the best in the nation, had learned that nine people with salmonella sickness. As a result, the department’s Team Diarrhea, a team of graduate students who work nights, started getting in touch with patients and their caregivers to get information about their food choices .
We had a lot of people that like peanut butter, said Carlota Medus, a state epidemiologist. But none of the brand names were matching up well.
Other states were reporting similar cases, but as in Minnesota, nobody could understand the shared food. The process is fraught with uncertainty. State health officials ask people what they remember ingesting in the days before they became ill. Poor recollection and bad records hamper these efforts, and officials are often sent on fruitless pursuits.
Having to wait is part of the problem. More than two weeks usually pass pass between the time someone is diagnosed with an illness and the result of a feces sample test is givin to F.D.A. or Food and Drug Administration officials.
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