USDA Blasted for Ground Turkey Outbreak Response 美国农业部受指责

wulianz

Consumer advocates are sharply questioning the government's handling of the ongoing, 26-state Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak that sparked a 36 million pound ground turkey recall from meat giant Cargill Wednesday night.

Advocates and food safety experts are blasting federal authorities for taking months to take action after multi-drug resistant Salmonella Heidelberg infections linked to ground turkey were first reported in early March. So far78 illnesses, including one deathin California, have been linked to the outbreak. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a public health alert on Friday, July 29, urging consumers to use caution cooking and handling ground turkey, but it wasn't until August 3 that Cargill announced the recall.

It is the third largest recall on record, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The recalled meat came from a single processing facility in Springdale, Arkansas, but ended up in dozens of different ground turkey products sold nationwide under a variety of brand names, including Honeysuckle White, Shady Brook Farms, Riverside, Aldi's Fit and Active Fresh, Spartan, Giant Eagle, Kroger and Safeway.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and FSIS indicated Thursday that they suspected a link between Salmonella illnesses and Cargill's Springdale turkey plant as early as mid-July, but said they did not have enough evidence to warrant a recall in response to the "slowly building outbreak" until very recently.Officials told reporters on a media callthat their investigation has been "aggressive."

"We need to be sure everything has lined up in a way that we're convinced," said Dr. David Goldman, assistant administrator for the Office of Public Health Science for the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

Some consumer advocates believe the response has been inadequate.

"The Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak shows a troubling lapse in coordination between federal agencies that are duty bound to protect the public," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, in a statement Thursday. She believes officials may have had preliminary evidence by late May linking illnesses to the Arkansas plant.

FSIS and CDC officials told reporters that routine sampling of retail ground turkey for the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) tested positive for the outbreak strain as early as March -- they found four positive total between March and June --leading investigators to hypothesize there was a link. Epidemiological evidence, however, according to those involved, did not back up the hypothesis until late last week.

Still, there are questions about whether consumers, or the Cargill plant, could have been notified of the potential link sooner.

"Given the severity of the outbreak, involving over 20 hospitalizations and one death, prompt consumer warnings and notification of the company are essential to stem the outbreak," says DeWaal. "The failure to issue a public alert earlier or to even notify the company shows a troubling lack of coordination that potentially contributed to the size and severity of the outbreak."

DeWall is calling for a full review of the government's handling of the outbreak. In May, CSPI petitioned USDA to declare antibiotic-resistant Salmonella Heidelberg, Salmonella Newport, Salmonella Hadar, and Salmonella Typhimurium "adulterants" under federal law, making products that contain them illegal to sell.

Bill Marler, the nation's leading food poisoning attorney, reiterated his support for declaring certain resistant strains of Salmonella as adulterants.