School Lunch Risk Uncovered by USA Today
As a story this week in USA Today reminds us, the government has a “zero-tolerance” policy for the pathogens E. coli O157:H7 and Salmonella in ground beef bound for schools via the national school lunch program. The program actually has a very good track record of keeping these pathogens away from our kids in school.
Why then — as the newspaper properly questions — did the program accept certain ground beef orders made by a supplier during a period this summer when the meat could have been contaminated with Salmonella?
It makes no sense and the government reply is feeble.
James Marsden, a professor of food safety and security at Kansas State University, is the voice of reason in this story. He said the decision put children at risk and there’s no question in my mind that it did.
The case revolves around the summer recall and ground beef Salmonella outbreak associated with the Fresno, California, plant of Beef Packers Inc., a subsidiary of food giant Cargill. The outbreak sickened at least 39 people in 11 states. Our firm, Pritzker Olsen Attorneys, is representing one of the victims.
Here’s the gist of the USA Today story by reporters Blake Morrison, Peter Eisler and Anthony DeBarros:
Even as public health officials told residents to throw out recalled products from the Fresno plant, the federal government paid Beef Packers hundreds of thousands of dollars for almost 450,000 pounds of ground beef made from June 5 to June 23, the dates covered by the recall. Four orders were produced for the school lunch program during that period.
One tested positive for Salmonella Newport, the strain that prompted the recall and can cause diarrhea, abdominal cramps, fever and vomiting. That order — produced June 9 – was rejected by the government.
Because testing of samples from the three other orders of beef were Salmonella-free, the meat made for schools was not included in the recall, even though it was produced during the span of the recall.
Lawmakers and food safety experts told the paper that the three orders should have been rejected nonetheless. That’s because the tests that led the government to release the beef are inconsistent and often wrong, Marsden told the newspaper.
Government officials with the Agricultural Marketing Service, the arm of the USDA that runs the school lunch program, stood behind their decision. But the program’s administrator said the USDA “plans to initiate an independent review” of
its “testing procedures and process control requirements” next year.
Feds Failed School Kids in Food Poisoning Recall
The federal agency that purchases commodities for school lunch and breakfast programs put school children at risk for disease in this year’s massive peanut product Salmonella outbreak because it failed to quickly remove food that the government suspected was poisoned.
That is one of the troubling findings in a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) of Congress. The report was obtained and written about today by USA Today reporters Peter Eisler and Blake Morrison. According to their excellent journalistic effort, the GAO believes that 226 students who got diarrhea, stomach pain and other Salmonella symptoms — including 46 who were hospitalized — may have consumed tainted products in school.
According to the report, the schools weren’t effectively notified by the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Services branch that peanut butter and other products made by Peanut Corporation of America was suspected of carrying a potentially lethal pathogen. In fact, there was some misinformation distributed by the agency.
Overall, more than 700 people were sickened in the outbreak, including nine individuals who died. Pritzker Olsen attorneys, our national food safety law firm, represents the families of three of those who tragically died and we have filed a Salmonella wrongful death lawsuit against the corporations we believe are responsible.
The USA Today story brings a renewed focus to the youngest subset of victims. As in all food poisoning outbreaks, the groups most at risk are children, the elderly and others who have weakened immune systems.
Quoting the GAO and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the story said 21 percent of victims in the outbreak were under the age of 5. Another 33 percent were aged 5-17.
Here’s some highlights from the GAO school children food poisoning report, which also looks beyond the peanut butter Salmonella outbreak:
- Federal agencies that supply food for 31 million school children fail to ensure products are pulled when there is reason to suspect they might be adulterated.
- USDA’s Food and Nutrition Services lacks systems to ensure it is notified when the Food and Drug Administration is investigating an outbreak of food poisoning that may involve a commodity purchased for school meals. And then, they don’t begin the process of notification until an actual recall announcement is made by FDA or the food producer who is under investigation.
- When alerts are issued, sometimes they take more than a week to reach all the affected schools.
- “Auditors cited the recalls of nearly 4,000 products containing peanuts from Peanut Corp. of America. After Salmonella was traced to the company’s Georgia plant, the FDA announced a limited recall of products made during a specific period. But the Food and Nutrition Service determined that its purchases from the plant were not made during that time and said on its website that schools weren’t affected. Not until six days later — after the recall was expanded to cover products made on other dates — did the service tell schools to pull all the plant’s products
Here’s a link to the USA Today school lunch Salmonella story.
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