Thread: Long road from farm to fork worsens food outbreaks

BY MARY CLARE JALONICK - Associated Press | AP – 8 hrs ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The recent listeria outbreak from cantaloupe shows that large-scale occurrences of serious illnesses linked to tainted food have grown more common over the years, partly because much of what we eat takes a long and winding road from farm to fork.

A cantaloupe grown on a Colorado field may make four or five stops before it reaches the dinner table. There's the packing house where it is cleaned and packaged, then the distributor who contracts with retailers to sell the melons in large quantities. A processor may cut or bag the fruit. The retail distribution center is where the melons are sent out to various stores. Finally it's stacked on display at the grocery store.

Imported fruits and vegetables, which make up almost two-thirds of the produce consumed in the United States, have an even longer journey. "Increasingly with agribusiness you have limited producers of any given food, so a breakdown in a facility or plant or in a large field crop operation exposes thousands because of the way the food is distributed," says Dr. Brian Currie, an infectious disease specialist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

The Colorado cantaloupe crop that's linked to 84 illnesses and as many as 17 deaths in 19 states has traveled so far and wide that producer Jensen Farms doesn't even know exactly where their fruit ended up.

The company said last week that it can't provide a list of retailers that sold the tainted fruit because the melons were sold and resold. It named the 28 states where the fruit was shipped, but people in other states have reported getting sick.

A Kansas-based processor that purchased cantaloupes from Jensen, Carol's Cuts, didn't provide a notice to its customers that it had sold the farm's cantaloupes until nine days after the original recall.

"The food chain is very complex," says Sherri McGarry, a senior adviser in the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Foods. "There are many steps, and the more steps there are the harder it can be to link up each step to identify what the common source" of an outbreak is.

Fewer and larger farms and companies dominate food production in the country. That has driven some consumers to seek out farmers markets and locally grown produce. Supermarkets now highlight food grown nearby, while farmers markets have soared in popularity. But many in the produce industry have come together to try and improve the ability to quickly trace food from field to plate.

This is good business. Large recalls, such as spinach in 2006, peanuts in 2009 and eggs in 2010, tend to depress sales for an entire product industry, even if only one company or grower was responsible for the outbreak.

Recent outbreaks of salmonella in peanuts and eggs, which are ingredients in thousands of foods, have been more widespread and sickened more people than have the tainted cantaloupe. "There has been a laser focus on improving traceability so any recall can identify the affected product immediately and not have an effect on the rest of the entire category," says Ray Gilmer of United Fresh Produce Association, which represents the country's largest growers.

Gilmer says that larger food companies have no choice but to take food safety very seriously. "The stakes for a large company to have a food safety incident are huge," he said. "It could destroy their company."

Listeria, a bacteria found in soil and water, often turns up in processed meats because it can contaminate a processing facility and stay there for a long period of time. It's also common in unpasteurized cheeses and unpasteurized milk, though less so produce such as cantaloupe.

The disease can cause fever, muscle aches, gastrointestinal symptoms and even death. One in five people who have listeria can die.

A food safety law passed by Congress last year gives the FDA new power to improve tracing food through the system. Food safety advocates say the law will help make the food network safer by focusing on making every step in the chain safer and making it easier to find the source of outbreaks. For the first time, larger farms are required to submit plans detailing how they are keeping their produce safe.

Erik Olson, director of food and consumer safety programs for the Pew Health Group, says it is critical that those improvements are made to prevent more, larger outbreaks as the system grows more complex. "Clearly the food industry has just changed enormously in the last several decades," Olson said. "It would be virtually impossible to sit down and eat a meal and eat food that hasn't come from all over the world."

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Online: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: http://www.cdc.gov/listeria/index.html


http://news.yahoo.com/long-road-farm...090306716.html

comments

The real truth is that by killing the small family farmer and letting huge corporations take over everything is what causes the problem. When everything is based on the bottom line only there is no concern for how the product is handled.

...

The oranges I had been getting from the grocery store are juiceless and tasteless, the plums and other juicy fruits are HARD in the middle, it's like they injected the fruits with something to make it ripen faster which makes it SPOIL quicker too. I haven't had any fruit except for the juiced kind in a year from the store.

Support your local farmer, You know where it came from, You know the person. Most of the time picked fresh that morning.

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Shut down the Large Farms and get back to Local Farming and Milking. It is a Waste of Fuel and Manpower to Transport Food Products across the US when the same Food Product can be Grown locally.

Two words : FARMERS MARKET

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Do something about the senseless government, people, and that will fix 90 percent of all our problems. We never heard much about this type of problem before NAFTA and other trade crap, and it was taken care of quickly if something did. But since the 90s, this type of thing has steadily grown, and now it is becoming impossible to track. Really, what else could you expect?

Listeria outbreak touches home
Posted: Oct 02, 2011 4:42 PM CDT By Brittany Hebert

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - The nation-wide listeria outbreak, which has infected 84 people and killed at least 15 within 19 states, has hit Baton Rouge.

Officials said cantaloupe is to blame for the death of a local 87-year-old woman. The family of 87-year-old Elaine Babcock told WAFB that their mother died yesterday from listeria.

Her son said that cantaloupe is to blame. The Department of Health and Hospitals acknowledged that someone contracted listeria from cantaloupe, but they could not confirm that it was Babcock.

State epidemiologist, Dr. Raoult Ratard, said he cannot confirm where the cantaloupe is from, but that the patient had eaten it about two weeks ago.

The elderly and those who have compromised immune systems are especially at risk. Cantaloupes are linked to the outbreak and have been recalled, but more people could fall ill because symptoms can take weeks to surface.

http://www.wafb.com/story/15598578/l...k-touches-home

Colorado farmers plead not guilty in listeria outbreak
Federal prosecutors say brothers Eric and Ryan Jensen were arrested Thursday
on charges of introducing adulterated food into interstate commerce.
1 day ago | By Associated Press


File photo of co-owner Eric Jensen as he examines cantaloupe on the Jensen Farms near Holly, Colo. The Food and Drug Administration recalled 300,000 cases of cantaloupe grown on the Jensen Farms after connecting it with a listeria outbreak.

DENVER, Colo. — The owners of a Colorado cantaloupe farm were arrested Thursday on charges stemming from a 2011 listeria epidemic that killed 33 people in one of the nation's deadliest outbreaks of foodborne illness.

Federal prosecutors said brothers Eric and Ryan Jensen were arrested on misdemeanor charges of introducing adulterated food into interstate commerce. Each man faces six counts.

They pleaded not guilty in federal court and were released on unsecured bonds. Trial is scheduled for Dec. 2.

Prosecutors said the federal Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined the Jensens didn't adequately clean the cantaloupe.

Criminal charges in food poisoning cases are rare, said attorney William Marler, who represents many of the listeria victims in civil cases against Jensen Farms. Only four other people have faced such charges in the past decade, he said.

The FDA has said the melons likely were contaminated in Jensen Farms' packing house. It concluded that dirty water on a floor, and old, hard-to-clean equipment probably were to blame. The epidemic was the deadliest outbreak of foodborne illness in 25 years, and it delivered a serious blow to Colorado cantaloupe farmers.

A number of lawsuits were filed by people who were sickened or who had a family member die after the outbreak. Eric Jensen, 37, and Ryan Jensen, 33, could face up to six years in prison and up to $1.5 million in fines each if convicted of all counts against them, prosecutors said. The Jensens' farm in southeastern Colorado filed for bankruptcy after the outbreak.

After Thursday's hearing, the men released a statement calling the outbreak a "terrible accident" and saying they were shocked and saddened by it. The statement said the charges do not imply they knew about the contamination, or that they should have known about it.

Jeff Dorschner, a spokesman for federal prosecutors, said the misdemeanor "was the best, most serious charge we could find."

Felony charges would have required prosecutors to show the contamination was intentional. "The real significance of the case against the Jensens is they are being charged with misdemeanors, which do not require intent, just the fact that they shipped contaminated food using interstate commerce," Marler said.

Dorschner said prosecutors decided to pursue the case because so many people were affected. "It was the magnitude of the number of people who were hospitalized and the number of people who died," he said. Prosecutors said people in 28 states ate the cantaloupe, and 147 people were hospitalized.

The illnesses soon were traced to the Jensens' business. The FDA said on Oct. 19, 2011, that the outbreak probably was caused by pools of water on the floor and old, hard-to-clean packing equipment at the Jensens' farm. The agency said contamination at the packing facility likely was to blame. Investigators found positive listeria samples on equipment and fruit there. The FDA said Jensen Farms had recently purchased used equipment that was corroded and hard to clean. The agency said the way the cantaloupes were cooled after coming off the fields might also have contributed to listeria growth.

Asked why it took so long to file charges, Dorschner said officials needed time to develop the case.

The outbreak was a setback for farms in Colorado's revered Rocky Ford cantaloupe region, where hot, sunny days and cold nights produce fruit known for its distinct sweetness. Jensen Farms was about 90 miles away from Rocky Ford, but the Jensens used the Rocky Ford name, and sales dropped across the region. Later, Rocky Ford farmers registered Rocky Ford Cantaloupe as a trademark, hired a full-time food safety manager and built a central packing operation where melons are washed and rinsed.

Tammie Palmer, whose husband, Charles, became ill after eating the cantaloupe, said she hopes the Jensens never return to farming. The Palmers, represented by Marler, filed a lawsuit against Jensen Farms seeking $2 million. The suit was still pending when Charles Palmer died this year of cancer. "I was hoping everything would be settled and I could do something with my husband, but that's not going to happen," she said.

http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/co...snews11&stay=1