[USCC] Fwd: SJ Mercury: Food-safety laws urged

[Jim McNelly]

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>Food-safety laws urged
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>AFTER HEARING, LAWMAKER SAYS GROWER-STATE COOPERATION HAS FAILED
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>By Brandon Bailey
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>San Jose Mercury News
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>SACRAMENTO - California has been ``asleep at the wheel'' when it 
>comes to preventing produce contamination, according to a Central 
>Valley legislator who ended a food-safety hearing Wednesday by 
>saying it's time to stop letting growers police themselves.
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>``We have a very, very poor and lax system here,'' said state Sen. 
>Dean Florez, D-Bakersfield, adding that he wants to propose strict 
>new regulations for the industry. He said a string of contamination 
>outbreaks in the past decade -- nine of them traced to spinach and 
>lettuce from the Salinas Valley -- shows the state's policy of 
>working cooperatively with farmers has failed.
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>State health officials and farm-industry representatives disagreed, 
>saying they have responded aggressively and are developing new 
>guidelines to prevent contamination. Growers allowed that some 
>regulation may be helpful, but insisted that more research is needed first.
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>``We still don't know for certain what happened here,'' said Dave 
>Puglia of the Western Growers Association, referring to last month's 
>outbreak of packaged spinach tainted with E. coli bacteria.
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>Officials are still investigating the source of that contamination, 
>which killed three people and sickened nearly 200 nationwide. Puglia 
>warned that regulations based on incomplete information could give 
>the public a false sense of security.
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>During three hours of grilling by Florez, who chairs the Senate 
>Committee on Governmental Organization, officials from the 
>Department of Health Services said they are the lead state agency 
>for investigating outbreaks of foodborne illness.
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>But the officials said they lack authority to order mandatory 
>produce recalls. Nor do they have the power to enforce water-quality 
>standards for irrigation or conduct regular inspections on farms. 
>They also acknowledged that they have failed to complete several 
>assessments, announced in January, of potential contamination 
>sources in the Salinas Valley, such as manure and water runoff.
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>While many growers have voluntarily adopted new safeguards, 
>officials acknowledged that it's unclear if they are being followed 
>``every day at every farm.''
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>Florez said he wants to make the growers' own guidelines mandatory 
>to ``put some teeth'' into enforcement. He said he's developing a 
>package of legislation that would require regular testing of water 
>and soil, inspections by health officials and penalties for growers.
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>Growers stressed that they have a strong incentive to prevent contamination.
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>``That people became sick from eating our produce is something we 
>will never set aside,'' said Jim Bogart of the Grower-Shipper 
>Association of Central California.
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>``We have seen a devastating blow to the economy of the entire 
>region,'' he added. ``Every one of my members understands the best 
>way to recover the confidence of consumers is to redouble our 
>efforts'' at preventing further outbreaks.
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>Health officials said they've had success in working with the 
>produce industry.
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>Natural Selection Foods, the San Juan Bautista company that bagged 
>and processed the spinach linked to the recent outbreak, agreed to a 
>recall within 12 hours after officials contacted it, said Dr. Kevin 
>Reilly of the Department of Health Services. He also praised the 
>Nunes Co., which decided to recall some of its lettuce last weekend 
>after a preliminary test found E. coli in irrigation water. The 
>company said further testing showed the E. coli was a harmless 
>strain. Federal regulators have yet to confirm those results with 
>their own tests.
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>Florez, who has a number of lettuce-growers and other farmers in his 
>inland district, complained after the hearing that problems in the 
>Salinas Valley have hurt the reputation of all California produce. 
>Not every farm-district legislator agrees with his approach.
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>State Sen. Jeff Denham, a Modesto Republican who chairs the Senate 
>Agriculture Committee, issued a statement Wednesday calling Florez's 
>hearing premature and saying he will convene his own hearing once 
>the spinach investigation is concluded.
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>But a health department official testified Wednesday that his agency 
>hasn't finished investigating another outbreak of contaminated 
>lettuce that occurred two years ago. Florez said that's an argument 
>against waiting for the next investigation.
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>``It's a very reactive stance,'' he said of the health department's 
>approach. ``If I were a consumer, I think I'd be worried that 
>California doesn't have a real grasp of how to make a workable 
>system for food safety.''