Food Safety Lawyer Calls for Food Safety Disclosure Laws
Fred Pritzker, Food Safety Lawyer, Calls for Food Safety Disclosure Laws Following American Foods Group, LLC Recently Announced E. coli O157:H7 Recall
American Foods Group, LLC just announced a recall involving 48 tons of ground beef products that may be contaminated with deadly E. coli O157:H7. American Foods Group, LLC is the name of the company resulting from a merger between American Foods Group and another meat processor, Rosen’s Diversified.
This is not the first E. coli O157:H7 recall involving American Foods Group, one of the merged companies. In December 2000 Green Bay Dressed Beef Inc. also doing business as American Foods Group, recalled over 500 tons of ground beef contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. Over 20 people were sickened as a result of that outbreak including a number of individuals with severe and permanent injuries.
Fewer than ten months later, on August 27, 2001, the same company recalled another 265 tons of fresh ground beef products contaminated with E. coli O157:H7.
On March 11, 2003 there was another E. coli O157:H7 recall involving Green Bay Dressed Beef doing business as American Foods Group at a Sharonville, Ohio plant. This time, 53 tons of fresh and frozen ground beef products were recalled.
In short, during the span of only seven years, a single meat producer and its predecessor entities has been responsible for E. coli O157:H7 recalls involving an astounding 1,732,000 pounds of ground beef products. What’s more, the most recent recall of 48 tons apparently involves production on just one day.
But here’s the worst part: it is extremely difficult for the average consumer to learn anything about this company’s E. coli O157:H7 track record and just as hard to find out if hamburger from this recalled lot made its way into the consumer’s household (much less the mouths of his/her loved ones).
That’s because the labels on most ground beef products do not disclose the identity of the company that produced it. In other words, even if a consumer wanted to avoid products from a company that consistently produced hamburger laced with E. coli O157:H7, there is no way to find out.
It gets worse. Even if an enterprising purchaser managed to find out that Store X sold hamburger produced by Company Y, trying to find out Company Y’s past history of E. coli O157:H7 adulteration requires the skill of an investigative reporter. There is simply no readily accessible source of information, other than digging through old press releases from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), about a meat producer’s prior safety record. Even that won’t tell you how many people were sickened in prior outbreaks, the cause of the outbreaks, what corrective action, if any, was taken, and what fines or penalties were levied.
If the currency of consumer choice is information, precious little is available about this most common food product. This skews the balance in the producer-consumer exchange. Purchasers are powerless to “vote with their pocketbooks” and reward safe companies and punish those that consistently produce unsafe and dangerous products.
Our Federal and state governments are complicit in this outrage. The consumer is without information because no law requires adequate labeling and no government agency is required to produce readily accessible information that allows consumers to make informed choices.
Many states require restaurants (unfortunately not my home state of Minnesota) to post their inspection scores or grades. This basic safety information allows customers to patronize establishments that take it upon themselves to run a clean operation. Why shouldn’t huge multi-national meat producers have to do the same?
This is not rocket science. Here’s how it could work: every meat package has to identify the name of the company that produced it and the date on which it was produced. Simple enough.
In addition, one of the agencies of the federal government (preferably one that is more interested in consumers than producers) would be charged with maintaining a readily accessible web site that lists data about each federally inspected producer including the company’s past history of recalls, amount of product recalled, the number of people injured or killed in past foodborne illness outbreaks and other information that allows for informed consumer choice.
If our present regulatory scheme can’t solve (or even dent) the problem of foodborne illness, at least let consumers know enough to make their own choices.
Fred Pritzker, is the founding partner of Pritzker | Ruohonen & Associates, P.A., one of America’s leading food safety law firms. He practices in Minnesota and represents survivors of foodborne illness throughout the United States. He may be reached toll-free at 1-888-377-8900, by email at fhp@pritzkerlaw.com, or through the firm’s web site at www.pritzkerlaw.com.