FDA's New Food Poisoning Outbreak Team
Food poisoning outbreaks in the United States would be quarterbacked by a "national outbreak director" at the FDA under an initiative announced in a job posting by FDA Deputy Commissoner for Foods Michael Taylor. Mr. Taylor told the Center for Infectious Disease and Research Policy (CIDRAP) that the agency's goal with the new position is to improve and broaden the agency's approach to foodborne outbreaks. One out of six Americans annually is sickened by foodborne illness.
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Said Taylor: "The recruitment of a chief medical officer and director of outbreaks here is part of an effort to really transform the way we think about and manage and learn from outbreaks in our effort to build a prevention-oriented food safety program.'' The food safety official told CIDRAP that FDA is putting together a permanent team to work on foodborne outbreaks of E. coli, Salmonella, Campylobacter and other pathogens. The team of about 40 will work full time on outbreaks, not as a side duty, and they also will perform postmortem work in the aftermath of outbreaks to look for lessons of prevention.The outbreak director, also called the chief medical officer, would be the point person on deciding when the FDA should step in and order any food recalls. The new slant by the FDA should allow the agency to drill deeper in outbreak investigations -- including more thorough plant and field inspections -- to find smoking gun evidence as to what caused an outbreak.
National food safety lawyer Fred Pritzker said the development is good news for consumers who become victims of foodborne illness outbreaks because it is impossible in some cases to file a food poisoning lawsuit unless public health authorities have linked an outbreak to a cause. "The better we become at outbreak detection, the more we can do for victims of food poisoning,'' Pritzker said. "Increased accountability and transparency will make our food supply safer in the long run.''
The FDA's job posting says the national outbreak director will have "overall responsibility for leadership and management, policy development, decision making, strategic planning, and day-to-day operations for food-related outbreaks and food incidents affecting the public health of the nation and within the purview of the FDA."
