They stopped checking and recalling products: during a pandemic, Americans risk food poisoning - ForumDaily
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They stopped checking and recalling products: during the pandemic, Americans risk food poisoning

Investigations of foodborne diseases have slowed, and food recalls have fallen to their lowest level in recent years due to failures in the multilayer food safety system in America caused by the coronavirus pandemic, writes USA Today.

Photo: Shutterstock

The pandemic has overwhelmed the system at every level, from federal agencies tasked with stopping the spread of contaminated food from factories and farms to state health departments that test people for foodborne pathogens such as E. coli.

Experts say there is so far no evidence that widespread problems have arisen as a result of this suspension, but food safety advocates say that Americans are now at greater risk.

“We have so many different safety measures in place, and COVID is knocking them out of the park one by one,” says Sarah Sorscher, deputy director of regulatory affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

In March, the Food and Drug Administration announced it would delay inspections of the nation's food factories, canneries and poultry plants, which require in-person employee attendance. As a result, FDA inspections fell from 900 per month to 8 per month in April. Along with this, FDA warnings issued for unsafe conditions have dropped, from hundreds per month to almost zero in April.

The number of product reviews has also fallen sharply. Typically, companies issue product recall announcements and report them to the FDA. FDA weekly reports show that reviews dropped from 173 in February to 105 in March and 70 in April.

The USDA also monitors food recalls. The number dropped from an average of more than 10 per month to an unprecedented zero in March and just 2 in April. Between January and April, the department recorded just 7 food recalls, the lowest number for that period in at least a decade.

A spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture said the agency is “continuing to comply with all inspection obligations” and has further pushed the food industry to “responsibility” in providing safe food.

The agency is "actively working with industry to improve manufacturing practices and reduce recalls, and we are seeing the results of these efforts," the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, some state health departments are so busy with COVID-19 that they are struggling to cope with the typical workload associated with foodborne illnesses, which in any case can be reduced statistically, as less and less Americans seek treatment for stomach ailments, preferring to stay home. rather than go to the doctor.

State health agencies usually work with local doctors and hospitals to collect information, which is then uploaded to the nationwide PulseNet database, maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

PulseNet's activity began to plummet in April, said Dr. Robert Tauks, director of the CDC Food Disease Division. A 50% reduction in the number of E. coli samples entering the system and a 25% decrease in the number of Salmonella cases were noted compared with the 5-year average. Despite this, according to Tauks, the changes "did not interfere with our ability to detect and investigate outbreaks of foodborne illness."

However, the number of completed federal investigations of foodborne disease outbreaks has also declined in both the CDC and the FDA.

Until May 7, the CDC managed to eliminate two outbreaks: an outbreak associated with fungi, which led to poisoning of three dozen people and the death of 4 people in the United States, and an outbreak associated with clover sprouts, which poisoned 51 people, mainly in Utah. By the same time, last year there were reviews of products on five different outbreaks, which affected more than 300 people. This pace was in line with the average annual CDC in 2011.

Information from the FDA's website also indicates a decrease in the number of completed investigations that led to food recalls this year. The two investigations are less than half the pace of 2018 and 2019, although faster than the pace of investigations in 2011 and 2015.

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FDA Inspection Drops

Typically, the FDA visits thousands of food factories each year to conduct safety inspections. Examples from recent inspections show alarming results.

“You did not exclude pests from the food plant to protect against food contamination,” one report states.

“You have not taken adequate precautions to prevent metal or foreign materials from entering your food,” another said.

But on March 18, the agency announced that it would “postpone” almost all such checks.

The number of inspections and warnings has declined rapidly. In 2018 and 2019, the FDA conducted an average of about 900 inspections per month, resulting in 600 warnings. In March, the number dropped to 307 inspections and 167 warnings. In April, a total of 8 inspections were conducted, leading to two warnings.

But Martin Widmann, a professor of food safety at Cornell University, said that food companies themselves have been and remain the main food safety testers, and that any level of inspection should be suspended to reduce the risk of inspector infection.

The FDA has changed other restriction systems as well. Over the past two months, the agency has loosened egg safety rules by requiring additive manufacturers to report “side effects” and forcing food companies to check food safety practices with ingredient suppliers.

Sorsher noted that companies continue to be legally responsible for addressing food safety risks internally. But she said she was worried about what would happen if COVID-19 also affected private inspectors and staff.

“What if the food safety specialist gets sick?” - suggested Sorscher. “When that last bit of support goes down and that security person can't do the job, we could have an outbreak and we might not even know it.”

Meat products packed at risk

In April, more than 1000 inspectors were laid off after getting sick with COVID-19 or suspended because they had a high risk of medical complications caused by the disease.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it has enough inspectors to cover all facilities that require monitoring. In April, the department abandoned 15 poultry farms, which, according to the Federal Register, means that they must maintain at least one line on average above the standard production rate. Failures mean that fewer USDA inspectors physically inspect the bird.

Supporters argue that companies still need to conduct other safety checks, such as taking microbial swabs from carcasses to look for contaminants such as salmonella. But the strain on meat packing inspections can undermine security.

On the subject: Coronavirus has suspended vaccination against other diseases: the world is threatened by malaria and polio

Feedback Failure

Another weak link in the food safety chain is doctors, patients and health departments. Typically, an outbreak investigation begins at the local level when a sick patient visits a doctor and is tested. These samples are then sent to commercial and public health laboratories and then uploaded to the PulseNet database.

But hospitals and health departments are understandably focused on COVID-19, says William Marler, a Seattle-based Marler Clark lawyer who specializes in food safety.

“If a child has acute kidney failure caused by E. coli, there generally should be a health care provider who will talk to them to find out the common denominator of the disease,” Marler said. - Are they able to do this now? Probably not."

In early May, representatives from the CDC reported that several state health departments reported problems with testing samples taken for analysis and asked for federal support. One state that was not named asked for additional help in conversations with patients to determine what they ate.

Many experts believe that the decline in statistics may be due to the fact that Americans prefer to stay at home rather than seek treatment during a pandemic. Changes in the risk factors for foodborne diseases are also possible: now people eat less often in restaurants, and more often at home. But, according to experts, there will be no exact answers about the impact of coronavirus on food safety until the pandemic subsides.

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