The final rule, issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Thursday, might mean Canada and Mexico can begin imposing retaliatory tariffs. The American Meat Institute, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Chicken Council, National Pork Producers Council, and the North American Meat Association all wanted USDA to work out a “sequencing agreement” with Canada and Mexico to avoid triggering retaliatory action.

With or without retaliatory tariffs, AMI’s Mark Dopp says the new rule is “more costly, complex and burdensome” than what it replaces.  And he says our trading partners have made it clear that the new rule is “no fix,” and shows a reckless disregard for trade relations.

A sequencing  agreement would have allowed time for WTO to review the meat labeling changes. Canada alone is set to impose retaliatory tariffs costing U.S. producers more than $1 billion a year.

“USDA remains confident that these changes will improve the overall operation of the program and also bring the mandatory COOL requirements into compliance with U.S. international trade obligations,” said Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

According to USDA, the final rule modifies the labeling provisions for muscle-cut covered commodities to require the origin designations to include information about each of the production steps, such as where an animal was born, where it was raised, and where it was slaughtered. The rule removes the allowance for commingling of muscle cuts.

Thursday was the deadline for the U.S. to comply with a June 2012 decision by the WTO Appellate Body that confirmed an earlier WTO panel decision finding that certain aspects of the COOL law discriminated against livestock imports from Canada and Mexico. The U.S was required by the WTO Appellate Body to bring COOL into compliance with the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade.

Some farm and consumer groups hailed the USDA action. “We are very pleased that the USDA has decided to stand strong and keep COOL,” said National Farmers Union (NFU) President Roger Johnson. “The decision to bring the law into compliance with the WTO’s ruling is a win-win situation for all interested parities.”

Johnson applauded USDA for taking a “proactive approach” and not allowing COOL to be watered down by process. Likewise the consumer-oriented group Food & Water Watch hailed USDA for a rule “that makes sensible changes for labeling requirements for meat.”

F&WW said there is a growing interest among consumers in knowing where their food comes from. The group also says the changes should satisfy the WTO. The largest producer-only cattle trade association in the U.S., the Billings, MT-based Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) agrees.

“USDA’s final rule is right on the mark,” said R-CALF USA COOL Committee Chair Mike Schultz, adding, “We are pleased that USDA did not weaken COOL in response to the WTO’s attack on our domestic food labeling program.”

“By requiring the locations where each production step occurs to be listed on the label, the final COOL rule addresses the WTO’s criticism by requiring all the information collected from cattle suppliers to be transmitted to consumers,” Schultz explained.

Schultz said the final COOL rule also ensures that labels are accurate by putting an end to the industry practice of using a multi-country label on meat derived exclusively from animals born, raised, and slaughtered in the United States when a meatpacker comingles any amount of foreign product during a production day.

“By correcting this huge loophole, the final rule restores the credibility of our labeling program and provides consumers with accurate origin information,” Schultz said.

R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard explained that COOL is necessary to facilitate competition for U.S. cattle and provide choices for U.S. consumers.

“Without COOL it is the meatpacker and not the consumer that decides from what country cattle will be sourced to satisfy consumer demand for beef. Only with COOL can consumers trigger a demand signal for cattle sourced from U.S. farmers and ranchers, which they can do simply by consistently choosing to purchase a USA product,” concluded Bullard.

The final COOL rule is being published in the Federal Register today (May 24, 2013). It became effective yesterday. USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is responsible for implementation, administration and enforcement of the COOL law and regulations. Country of origin labeling is required for various food products, including fruits, vegetables, fish, shellfish, and meats. AMS will be conducting education and outreach programs on the COOL rule changes.

According to USDA, more than 3,800 retailer reviews have been conducted since the COOL law took effect on May 16, 2009 and about 98 have been found to be in compliance.

Only the rules for meat were challenged by Canada and Mexico at the WTO.

The Oklahoma State Health Department praised the recent outpouring of support for victims in the storms’ aftermaths, but cautioned that while many people are generously donating food, that food must also be served in a sanitary manner to avoid spreading foodborne illness.

“Processes must be in place to ensure that products and services do not inadvertently harm or put at risk the very people who are impacted by the tornado or those assisting the families or those involved in clean-up efforts,” said OSHD on its website Wednesday. “One such area of concern is the availability of free food or food for sale for residents, responders and relief workers in the storm-damaged areas.”

The health department advised food vendors to serve non-perishable items that do not need to be heated before consumption.

It also recommended the following precautions for those preparing food in areas affected by the tornadoes:

• Protect food from flying debris and insects by using screens in any open food areas.
• Thaw frozen food properly prior to cooking, and cool food rapidly prior to storage.
• Cook all food thoroughly, serve at correct temperature, and avoid cross-contamination.
• Use clean utensils to handle cooked foods.
• Wash your hands, dishes and utensils used for preparing and serving food, with water from a safe source.

The analysis found that between 1973 and 2011 there were 55 antibiotic-resistant outbreaks, 34 (58 percent) of which occurred since the year 2000. Dairy products, ground beef, and poultry were identified as the source of half of those. Salmonella was the most common culprit. Overall, 56 percent of the pathogens identified were resistant to five or more antibiotics.

“Antibiotic resistance isn’t a hypothetical problem,” said CSPI food safety research associate Susan Vaughn Grooters. “Real people are getting really sick from antibiotic-resistant pathogens in our food supply.”

In a press release highlighting the report, Reps. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) called for stronger action from the government in tackling antibiotic resistance issues.

“How many more outbreaks will it take before the USDA and the FDA take this problem seriously?” Slaughter asked in the release. “We have evidence that the practice of overusing antibiotics in food-animals is ruining these drugs’ effectiveness, and every day that the government stands idly by, we move closer to the nightmare scenario where routine infections can no longer be cured with antibiotic treatment.”

Slaughter, the only microbiologist serving in Congress, is the primary sponsor of the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA), which would require that eight major classes of antibiotics be limited to only treat sick animals, not to be used subtherapeutically. DeLauro is a cosponsor of the legislation.

“It is clear that antibiotic-resistant strains of Salmonella present a very real risk to the public health,” Delauro said. “I urge the USDA to expeditiously review the petition that CSPI submitted more than two years ago and protect the public health from the clear risk of antibiotic-resistant foodborne pathogens.”

In May 2011, CSPI petitioned USDA to declare antibiotic-resistant Salmonella as an adulterant, which would make it illegal in meat products. USDA has not yet responded to the petition.

The Vermont Senate won’t take up GMO food labeling until at least 2014, and the fate of the bill in Connecticut is now up to House Speaker Brendan Sharkey, who has expressed concerns about the bill putting the small state at an economic disadvantage.

As drafted, the Connecticut bill would not take effect until at least three other states adopted similar labeling laws for GMO foods. Sharkey says he’d like to see a compact with several states including a big one like New York State.

A “Just Label It” campaign has been active in as many as 37 states this legislative season, but so far has not been able to move a bill all the way through the process to a governor’s desk.

“The time for GMO labeling is now,” said Lisa Stokke, co-founder of Food Democracy Now, which claims 650,000 farmer and citizen members. “Americans should have the right to know just as the citizens of more than 60 other countries already do.”

Connecticut’s Senate Republican Leader, John McKinney, said the GMO labeling bill did not ban, restrict, or tax anything and just “lets moms and dads know what’s in the food they’re buying for their young kids.”

In Washington State, a ballot measure known as Initiative 522 in November will produce an up or down vote on GMO labeling in the Evergreen State. A similar ballot question in California last November resulted in a slim vote against GMO labeling.

“It’s really a testament to how agriculture is transitioning from industrialized to pasture-based,” said AWA program director Andrew Gunther, referring to the many applications the organization received for the grants.

The grants this time around were in excess of $120,000 and went to an array of projects involving beef cattle, goats, sheep, dairy sheep, chickens, and pigs. Funding priorities included genetic improvement of animals in pasture-based systems, outdoor access and mobile housing, and non-lethal predator control. This is the fifth year of the grant program.

Open to current Animal Welfare Approved farmers as well as those who have applied to join the program, the grants are especially useful to farmers seeking a low-risk transition to sustainable, outdoor farming practices, according to the an AWA press release.

Animal Welfare Approved is based on the philosophy that animals should be provided with what they need so they can follow their natural behaviors. This, in turn, promotes their physiological and psychological health and well-being, according to the program’s website. One of the requirements is that animals be raised on the pasture or range.

“For those who can’t visit the farm themselves, Animal Welfare Approved serves as the eyes and ears of the conscientious consumer,” says the organization’s website.

What do consumers want?

Out in the marketplace, consumer preferences have been changing. Whereas in the past, consumers bought meat, dairy products and eggs according to price and perceived quality, some consumers now want to know how the animals those products come from were raised. They make their choices based on a range of labels that indicate farming practices such as “Certified Organic” and “Animal Welfare Approved.”

In a recent stakeholders’ conference hosted by the Animal Agriculture Alliance in Arlington, Virginia, Kathy Keiffer, a broadcaster who produces a food issues program on the Heritage Radio Network, told participants that consumer awareness is the biggest change occurring in the food business.

“We’re in the midst of a food revolution,” she said, pointing out that influential celebrity chefs are embracing new changes in raising livestock and progressive food companies are shifting toward more “natural” production systems.

Not only celebrity chefs, but also large fast food chains and retailers are reacting to consumer concerns about humane animal practices. Burger King, for example, decided last year that it would switch to using eggs from cage-free hens and use pork products only from pigs that aren’t kept and bred in small cages. McDonald’s, Wendy’s and other food-service companies have also adopted policies or reached agreements with the Humane Society of the United States on the humane treatment of pigs.

Food policy director for the Humane Society Matt Prescott told a CNN reporter that Burger King’s decision in favor of cage-free eggs sends the message that customers and the public don’t want animals confined for their whole lives in cages and that the food industry will have to make changes.

Out in the retail marketplace, North American pork producers Smithfield, Hormel, Olymel and Maple Leaf Foods have decided to stop the use of gestation crates for pigs at their company-owned facilities.

And grocery retailer Supervalu has expressed its commitment to animal welfare in a two-page public policy statement, in which it said, “Animal welfare and food-safety inspection audits are integral to our customer and vendor relationships.”

The retailer has also established a Consumer Interest Council “to provide guidance and counsel to Supervalu…on issues pertaining to animal welfare, food safety, consumer advocacy and corporate citizenship.”

Speaking of food safety…

A large part of consumers’ growing interest in humane animal practices was actually fueled by food safety concerns, which opened the door to a new awareness of how meat animals were being raised and slaughtered.

It wasn’t that long ago that most consumers thought that farming was still very much like the pictures of red barns and cows grazing knee-deep in lush grass or chickens wandering about in front of a farmhouse that they saw on calendars and county fair promos. Very few people even knew what an “animal feeding operation” or feedlot was. Photos of these certainly were not used to promote agriculture.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, animal feeding operations (AFOs) are those “where animals are kept and raised in confined situations. AFOs congregate animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals, and production operations on a small land area. Feed is brought to the animals rather than the animals grazing or otherwise seeking feed in pastures, fields, or on rangeland.”

These AFOs are an essential part of the drive to produce protein as cheaply as possible for consumers. In the case of cattle, once they’re fattened up to their finished weight with grain, usually in about 3 months, they are transported to a slaughterhouse. Before going to the feedlot, they’re almost always raised on pasture or out on the range.

For a long time this system was pretty much the status quo, with no questions asked. But in 1993, E. coli O157:H7, a potentially fatal foodborne pathogen, grabbed headlines when more than 600 people fell ill and four people died of E. coli infections attributed to undercooked hamburgers served at Jack-in-the-Box restaurants. (Some of the people became infected with the pathogen after being exposed to infected people who had eaten the undercooked burgers.) From there, consumers began hearing about recalls of hundreds of thousands of pounds of meat contaminated with the pathogen.

“That burst the illusion that everything was just fine with the way meat was being produced,” Patricia Whisnant, a veterinarian, rancher and grass-fed beef producer, told Food Safety News. “People were getting sick, and we began to look more carefully at how our animals were being raised.”

Whisnant is co-owner of Rain Crow Ranch in southern Missouri, a family farm that raises grass-fed beef, heritage pork, pasture poultry and operates a processing plant, all of which are Animal Welfare Approved. The organic farm follows humane animal practices from birth through slaughter.

When asked if there’s a connection between animal welfare and food safety, Whisnant said there definitely is.

“Animals that are allowed to live within their biologic and behavioral instincts are healthier,” she said. “Many pathogens and parasite issues are taken care of in the production system making them safer.”

An example of that, she said, is rotating cows from pasture to pasture. Once the cows are gone from one pasture, the sun will kill all or most of the pathogens or parasites that might be left behind. When they return to that pasture, they’re coming back to a clean environment, in contrast to animals that are confined in filthy and overcrowded conditions.

When talking about her family’s success in being able to stay in farming while also providing jobs for her six children and four staff members, in addition to the 50 people employed at the processing plant, Whisnant said she credits people’s concerns about food safety and humane animal treatment for “being where we are today.”

She said that the ranch and its processing facility put food safety at the top of the list of priorities, going above and beyond what the USDA requires.

“If we don’t make it a priority, a recall would close our doors,” Whisnant said.

As part of their food safety strategy, the Whisnants don’t release any meat for sale until pathogen test results have come back.

Animal Welfare Approved’s Andrew Gunther said that after World War II, the drive was to feed a growing nation with cheap protein. The common goal behind animal feeding operations was to bring a lot of animals together in one place, as is the case in confinement dairies, feedlots, and caged poultry. But that, he said, meant that low levels of E. coli, Salmonella, and other harmful foodborne pathogens could multiply.

“The unintended consequence was that we created the breeding grounds for dangerous pathogens,” Gunther said. “The system is designed to make animals carry pathogens.”

Gunther said that the livestock industry reacted to the reality that people were getting sick, and in some cases dying, from foodborne pathogens. It adopted interventions such as washing carcasses with acid to remove bacteria that could sicken people and designed plans that would pinpoint critical places in the slaughtering and butchering processes where pathogens would likely be lurking. As a result, beef-related foodborne illnesses have dramatically declined over the past several decades, said Chase Adams, spokesman for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

The industry also put the consumer into the food safety equation, emphasizing, for example, that raw meat needs to be cooked to certain temperatures to kill the dangerous pathogens and handled in ways to ensure that it doesn’t cross-contaminate other foods.

“So now, you, the consumer have to take the responsibility off the backs of industry,” Gunther said, who compares the interventions and calls for consumer responsibility to applying a bandage to the problem instead of dealing with what he sees as the root of the problem — raising and confining animals in ways that run contrary to their natural behaviors.

Not everyone agrees with this view. A recently released discussion paper, “The Direct Relationship between Animal Health and Food Safety Outcomes,” by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (a research group that includes the Farm Bureau and the American Veterinary Medical Association) cited research on the difference between keeping animals indoors vs. outdoors: “Housing livestock indoors can also provide advantages in managing many foodborne organisms,” says the paper. “Because outdoor environments cannot be cleaned or disinfected easily, pathogens can persist in the soil, standing water, outdoor structures, and other micro-environments, infecting successive generations of livestock.

Also, according to the research cited in the paper: “Other studies have shown that Campylobacter and Salmonella (foodborne pathogens) are more common in chickens with outdoor exposure than in birds raised in conventional indoor housing (cages). Dairy cows were shown to be at greater risk of subclinical mastitis when kept in outdoor environments compared with cows kept in barns.”

In an e-mail to Food Safety News, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association spokesman Adams said that the association supports providing choices to meet consumer preferences for beef, whether grain-fed, grass-fed, natural or organic.

“Our expectation is the that everyone who handles cattle, regardless of the production method, follows established Beef Quality Assurance best practices to ensure animals are handled properly,” he said. “Raising healthy animals is the first step in producing wholesome beef.”

He also said that no studies have shown a significant difference between grass-fed or grain-fed cattle when it comes to safety or nutritional content.

“The bottom line,” he said, “is that consumers can be assured that regardless of whether they choose to purchase grass-fed or grain-feed beef, the cattle were raised humanely and that the product is safe for their families.”

What about antibiotics?

The subtherapeutic use of antibiotics to boost growth and to help animals raised in stressful, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions resist disease has also grabbed headlines. (Subtherapeutic use differs from using antibiotics to treat animals that are sick.)

Many scientists are pointing to the likelihood that the subtherapeutic use of antibiotics in agriculture is contributing to the dramatic rise in life-threatening antibiotic-resistant bacteria, often referred to as “super bugs.” They also say that it provides the perfect conditions for some very dangerous bacteria to mutate and become resistant to the antibiotics. That’s especially important if the same antibiotics used on animals are also used to treat human illnesses.

An example of this in the food safety arena is the 2011 outbreak of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella linked to ground turkey, which killed one person and sickened at least 136 people across 31 states.

United Kingdom Government’s Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies recently warned that the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria poses a global health catastrophe that ranks alongside the threat of climate change or terrorism.

Veterinarian and rancher Whisnant would agree. She told Food Safety News that when she started her practice she could use penicillin on animals suffering from an array of health problems.

“It made veterinary a profession,” she said. “It truly was a miracle drug. But today, penicillin is useless. By administering antibiotics at subtherapeutic levels, the industry has been breeding superbugs.”

She considers this to be the biggest food safety issue today — and one of the most serious health crises the world is facing.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, has said that “injudicious” antibiotic uses in agriculture are a public health risk. In a guidance paper on this topic, it proposed two “non-binding” recommendations:

1. The use of medically important antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals should be limited to those uses that are considered necessary for assuring animal health.

2. The use of medically important antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals should be limited to those uses that include veterinary oversight or consultation.

At the same time, there are those who think differently about this issue. Again, according to CAST’s discussion paper, antibiotics have a major, positive effect on improving animal and human health.

And while the discussion paper concedes that the use of antibiotics in food-animal production raises concerns about antibiotic resistance in bacteria and how that could affect the effectiveness of antibiotics in treating human infections, the paper points out that “concern about antibiotic resistance is not equivalent to actual risk.”

The paper also says that resistant bacteria were present long before antibiotics were discovered and found in many places without livestock exposure.

The elephant in the room

For the most part, meat, milk and eggs produced in ways that follow an animal’s natural behavior (outdoors, cage-free and on grass, for example) is more expensive than meat, milk and eggs produced in conditions where many animals are raised together in confinement situations. For that reason, supporters of confinement operations say that this industrial type of agriculture allows for efficiency of scale, which, in turn, benefits consumers by providing affordable food.

Most farmers and ranchers who raise their animals based on their natural behaviors will quickly agree that they get higher prices for their products, thanks to strong demand from health-minded consumers. But they also point out that those higher prices allow them to stay in farming.

“It provides a way to survive in the world of integrated behemoth farming enterprises,” says Rain Crow Ranch’s website.

Rob Noel, spokesman for the Washington State Beef Commission, told Food Safety News that according to a retailer he had just spoken with, wholesale prices of three different cuts of beef showed that grass-finished beef cuts were, on the average, just shy of $2 more per pound than grain-finished cuts. But because prices vary according to season and sales, no hard-and-fast figures can be supplied.

Which is healthier?

Farmers who follow Animal Welfare Approved, or similar principals, say that meat, milk and eggs produced in ways that follow an animal’s natural behavior are healthier because they contain certain substances such as beneficial fatty acids and are, therefore, less expensive in the long run because they promote human health.

However, some health experts discount this view, saying that there’s no significant difference in the nutritional value of the meat, milk and eggs from animals raised industrially or according to their natural behaviors.

Washington State Beef Commission’s Noel said that while grass-fed beef does have more Omega 3s, which are said to promote heart health, than grain-fed beef, beef is not a significant contributor to Omega 3s in a person’s diet, as is salmon, for example.

But in speaking about consumer preferences, Noel said consumers are often guided by what they hear and read from a variety of sources.

“Out in the marketplace, consumers’ perceptions are reality,” he said.

The future

Although it’s estimated that only about 3 percent of the beef in the U.S. is grass-fed, veterinarian and grass-fed beef producer Whisnant told reporters in 2010 that there’s been a dramatic rise in demand for cattle reared on a pasture diet instead of an industrial feedlot. And she went so far as to predict that grass-fed beef should account for 10 percent of America’s beef consumption overall by 2016.

In a recent interview with Food Safety News, she said it’s been amazing to her how many traditional beef producers are looking for alternatives, in large part because of the high price of corn. She said that feedlots are also getting squeezed economically and looking for alternatives.

“I think we’ll see grass-fed beef make up more than 10 percent of America’s beef consumption by 2016,” she said.

Cases have occurred in six states, including California (1 case), Minnesota (2), North Dakota (1), New York (1), Texas (2) and Wisconsin (1), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued an outbreak alert Wednesday. 

The first patient fell ill on March 4, 2013, and the most recent illness onset was April 30. CDC notes that illnesses that occurred after May 10 may not yet have been recorded due to the delay between when a person falls ill and when their case is reported.

None of the victims have been hospitalized.

The source of the illnesses is thought to be tahini sesame paste made by Krinos Foods, LLC of Long Island City, New York.

Krinos issued a voluntary recall of the product on April 28 for potential Salmonella contamination, and expanded that recall May 9 after more samples tested positive for Salmonella.

Both outbreak strains of Salmonella – S. Montevideo and S. Mbandaka – were isolated from samples of the recalled paste. Salmonella Montevideo was isolated from a sample collected by the Michigan Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration detected Salmonella Mbandaka in a sample of Krinos’ tahini paste arriving in the U.S. for distribution.

The recalled lots of tahini paste have expiration dates between January 1, 2014 and June 8, 2014; or between October 16, 2014 and March 15, 2015.

However, CDC is recommending that consumers don’t eat any sesame tahini paste produced by Krinos.

The Southern Nevada Health District announced Wednesday that the outbreak strain of Salmonella had been found in a sample of cooked chorizo collected from the tapas-style restaurant.

It is unclear how the chorizo became contaminated, but health officials say the meat likely came into contact with the bacteria at the restaurant, not before it arrived.

Nevertheless, “Trace-back efforts have been redirected at the chorizo products due to a small possibility that raw chorizo was contaminated prior to arriving at Firefly,” said SNHD in its third interim outbreak report, issued Wednesday.

According to the health department, the bacteria sickened 290 patrons of the restaurant and 4 workers. Of these cases, 73 have been confirmed part of the outbreak by DNA testing. The 221 others are considered probable.

The first reported illnesses began on April 22, and the last victim fell ill May 1. All identified victims reported dining at the restaurant between April 21 and April 26.

SNHD notes that the case count could change as more illnesses are reported or some are determined not to be connected to Firefly.

Health officials submitted the DNA fingerprint of the outbreak strain of Salmonella serotype I:4,5,12:i:- to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which said no other Salmonella cases in the country match those connected to Firefly at this time.

John Simmons, Firefly’s head chef, expressed his commitment to learning from this outbreak to avoid another such incident in the future.

“While we are anxious to have the final report and a better idea of what may have happened, for me, it was never about the source – it was about making sure I did everything in my power to prevent this from happening again,” said Simmons in a statement Wednesday.

“We’ve hired a food safety consultant with over 30 years of experience to double and triple check our methods and we’ll operate in the mode of continuous improvement, constantly upgrading our practices with new technology, new methods, and additional training.” 

In a ruling yesterday, Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the Oakland U.S. District Court said FDA and CFS now have until June 10 to agree on a schedule for releasing the yet-unpublished food safety rules, mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011.

CFS filed suit against FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg in August of 2012 after the FDA missed a series of deadlines for publishing the regulations mandated by FSMA, which is intended to update the U.S. food safety system by transforming it from a reactive one to a preventive one.

After numerous deadlines went by without the release of the mandated rules, CFS went to court to try to force FDA to adhere to these time constraints.

In a decision this April, Judge Hamilton ruled that FDA must come up with a new schedule for issuing the proposed rules by May 20.

But when FDA sent its updated schedule to the non-profit food watchdog May 15, the group was not happy with the timeline. Since the two parties did not have enough time to discuss these problems before the new timeline was due five days later, they filed a Joint Stipulation for Extension of Time, which Judge Hamilton granted on May 17.

According to the order, CFS and the federal food regulatory agency now have until June 10 to agree upon a timeframe for releasing the rules that’s acceptable to both parties.

Since CFS filed its complaint last year, FDA has released some of the key FSMA-mandated rules it failed to publish on time, including preventive controls for human food and standards for produce safety, both released in early January.

Other rules continue to languish at the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Internal and Regulatory Affairs, which must approve the rules before they are published. FDA attributes some of the delay in its release of the FSMA rules to the hang-ups that come with this part of the process.

Among those rules that have yet to be released are the foreign supplier verification program – set to overhaul import safety, an establishment of regulations to ensure the safe transport of food products and a rule ensuring neutrality of third-party audits.

While there are no exact figures, USDA estimates that every month somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 million pounds of beef is tenderized, a process that utilizes needles or blades to pierce intact steaks and roasts to make them tender for consumers. While the government recommends consumers cook mechanically tenderized, or non-intact meat, to a higher internal temperature than intact steaks (160 degrees versus 145), there is no requirement to label products so consumers can tell the difference between them.

Mechanically tenderized beef products have been linked to five E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks in the past decade, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including a 21-state outbreak that sparked a large recall on Christmas eve in 2009. In those outbreaks, 174 people fell ill and four died, but most health experts assume those stats don’t capture the full health impact as foodborne illnesses are chronically underreported and usually not successfully linked to a source.

“We believe this is an important public health issue,” said Pat Buck, director of outreach and education for the Center for Foodborne Illness Research and Prevention.  “We’re not happy that it has not made it out of OMB. We hope it will move forward.”

Buck, who became a food safety advocate after losing her grandson Kevin Kowalcyk to a severe E. coli O157:H7 infection in 2001, said the rule is especially imperative as the United States approaches another grilling season so that consumers know to cook tenderized steaks to a higher temperature, as is recommended for ground beef products.

“We are now going into our fifth grilling since we began asking for labeling,” she said. “It should have happened a long time ago.”

It’s not clear what is causing the lengthy review on the proposed rule, which the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) lists as not economically significant (other economically significant regulations have undergone lengthy reviews at OIRA, which is charged with weighing the costs and benefits of federal agency actions). Inquiries about the delay were not returned by OMB or USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.

According to White House meeting records, the American Meat Institute met with OIRA staff in March about the proposed rule, the details of which are unknown to stakeholders. Mark Dopp, AMI’s senior vice president of regulatory affairs, said the meeting was to discuss a recently released abstract on the proposal.

The abstract posted on the government’s regulatory dashboard said that FSIS is proposing to require the term “mechanically tenderized” on the labels of raw or partially cooked needle or blade tenderized beef products, including products that are injected with marinade or other solutions, unless these products are going to be fully cooked before heading to customers.

According to the outline, FSIS is also “proposing to require that labels of raw and partially cooked needle or blade tenderized beef products destined for household consumers, hotels, restaurants, or similar institutions include validated cooking instructions that inform consumers that these products need to be cooked to a specified minimum internal temperature, and whether they need to be held at that minimum internal temperature for a specified time before consumption, i.e., dwell time or rest time, to ensure that they are thoroughly cooked.”

FSIS estimates that labeling mechanically tenderized products would cost the industry about $3.6 million and would save between 191 and 239 illnesses, thereby saving between $627,000 and $784,000 in medical costs each year.

“We expressed our concerns that the abstract’s characterization of the proposed rule includes a labeling recommendation that is too broad,” said Dopp, when asked about AMI’s meeting with OIRA. “We believe any label should have a distinct purpose and benefit and be something consumers will act on. At this point we have not seen the proposal nor do we know when OMB will issue the proposal. However, we look forward to reviewing it and offering our comments at the appropriate time.”

Carol Tucker-Foreman, distinguished policy fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, said the problem is that while Washington delays ordinary consumers have no way of knowing if the steak they are buying and cooking is intact or not and, with a sputtering economy and high unemployment, many consumers are buying cheaper products, which are often tenderized.

“The steaks we’re talking about are not the ones being served at the Palm. The steaks we’re talking about are the ones ordinary folks are buying,”said Tucker-Foreman. “Maybe the folks who work at OMB make too much money, but that should not mean that ordinary folks are the ones put at risk.”

“Labeling can help consumers protect themselves and their families. We hope OMB finishes its review so the rule can be finalized soon,” said Ami Gadhia, senior policy counsel at Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports, which has over 7 million subscribers, featured mechanically tenderized meat and the potential risks in its June issue.

James Marsden, a food safety professor at Kansas State University, weighed into the debate on the industry trade publication Meatingplace this week.

“This isn’t the first time the issue has been raised in the popular press and until the issue is addressed, it won’t go away,” wrote Marsden. He believes there are two options for the industry: label the products so consumers know to cook them to 160 degrees, which may not be the “most desirable solution,” or add an intervention to to reduce the risk of contamination before tenderizing products to significantly reduce the chance that pathogens can be translocated to the center of cuts.

“It’s up to the industry to decide whether to wait for a regulation that dictates labeling and cooking requirements or to invest in technologies that eliminate the problem before mechanically tenderized products ever reach consumers,” he said.

Vibrio are dangerous bacteria that can cause serious foodborne illness in those who eat contaminated shellfish. They are the summer’s bug-a-boo for raw oysters, causing illnesses and harvest area closures.

But this summer, Vibrios won’t threaten sales for Crystal Seas Seafood because the Mississippi Gulf company will be using a new $5 million food irradiation facility located at the Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport.

The irradiation service is built into a $12 million cargo warehouse at the airport, which has completed a $51 million expansion since Hurricane Katrina. The company that runs the irradiation business, Gateway America, LLC, says it is offering the Gulf oyster industry a way to increase food safety and extend the shelf life of its shellfish.

Before the arrival of irradiation at the airport, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources recognized three post-harvest processing options for oysters. They included:

• Individually Quick Frozen (IQF) – Oysters are frozen to reduce microorganisms including Vibrio bacteria and increase shelf life.
• Heat-Cool Pasteurization (HCP) – Oysters are put through a patented hot-cold pasteurization process, often used for packing for the half shell market.
• High Hydrostatic Pressure (HHP) – Oysters are subjected to a patented high-pressure system that decreases microorganisms including Vibrio, used for both half shell and shucked meat.

The state’s education materials for oystermen does recognize the potential for irradiation, high pulse magnet and value-added product technologies for post harvesting, but that future has arrived at the airport.

In a region where aficionados will discuss and debate the taste and texture of raw oysters almost by reef, many will be watching the reaction to the Crystal Clear Oysters.  Crystal Seas Seafood can make the claim their oyster will be keep cold until served because irradiation only increases the temperature by about a half degree and it’s then brought back down. That’s far less “heat” applied than other intervention methods.

Gateway’s food customers at the new airport facility are not limited to oystermen. It says exotic produce and imports going through the port of entry will have to go through irradiation.

Vibrio vulnificus (V. vulnificus) and Vibrio parahaemolyticus (V. parahaemolyticus) are bacteria that occur naturally in warm coastal areas, such as the Gulf of Mexico, and their presence often leads to harvest area closures after raw or undercooked oysters are consumed and make people sick, or after water temperatures are deemed to amenable to the bacteria.

V. parahaemolyticus can causes non-bloody diarrhea as soon as 2 to 48 hours after exposure. V. vulnificus infects the bloodstream of immune compromised persons and after a 1 to 7 day incubation period can result in death within two days.

Vibrio bacteria occur naturally in the Gulf of Mexico. During warm-water months high concentrations can occur.

Early in the Obama Administration, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tried to ban raw oysters during the more dangerous summer months, but reaction from the Gulf caused the federal government to back off the idea—at least for the time being.

Health officials announced their findings at press conference Tuesday after a collaborative investigation involving local, state and federal agencies. The final piece was an investigative report from the Texas Department of State Health Services (Region 7) that was delivered to the Brazos County Health Department Monday.

The health officials said that although not 100 percent, it is highly likely that the 5 confirmed cases were linked to the Mexican style restaurant. At the press conference, they said it is not known if the cause was due to improper temperature, improper cooking, or cross-contamination.

Five other cases involved in the outbreak went unconfirmed.

The sickened adults recovered fairly quickly without hospitalization, but two College Station boys were admitted for a long stay at Children’s Hospital in Houston as they fought off Shiga toxins attacking their kidneys.  Four-year-old Jack Melton has been released from Children’s, while his 18-month-old brother was released today.

The investigation was made more difficult by the fact that there were no food samples available so the source could not be tested.

The Texas officials said they view the April outbreak as an isolated incident, not on ongoing threat to public health in the communities that surround one of the largest universities in the Lone Star State.

No indication was found that it would link the illnesses to meat distribution, the health officials said. They said Coco Loco was cooperative throughout the investigation.

The restaurant was inspected before and after the incident. It has implemented a glove only policy, will keep a log for holding and cooking temperatures for meat. BCHD will continue to monitor with an increased number of inspections. They have been following accepted methods for thawing of meats.

And most importantly, health officials said, there have been no further cases.

The baking mix products were distributed nationwide through direct sales and food service distribution centers and include the following products:

According to the company, the recall was as the result of notification by CHS Foods that ingredients used in the aforementioned products were being recalled for Salmonella.  The company has ceased the production and distribution of the product as FDA and the company continue their investigation as to what caused the problem.

If implemented, the rules would change the “standard of identity” for milk to allow certain artificial sweeteners considered “safe and suitable” to be included in the product without additional information on the label such as “reduced calorie.” Any sweetener would still be required to be listed among the ingredients.

The proposed rule change was suggested in a joint petition from the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) submitted to the FDA back on March 16, 2009.

Currently, milk products containing artificial sweeteners — most commonly chocolate milk — are required to include a claim regarding the nutrient content that notes a calorie reduction caused by the lack of nutrients. Products sweetened with artificial flavorings such as aspartame or sucralose contain fewer calories than equivalent products sweetened with nutritive flavorings such as sugar.

As depicted in the FDA graphic reprinted here, the rules would make it so that the labels of artificially sweetened milk products would look the same as their counterparts made without those sweeteners.

The dairy groups say that the additional label information is unappealing to children, who prefer flavored milk over conventional milk. They also say that updating the standard of identity for milk would “promote honesty” and establish consistency across dairy labels.

Other products that would be affected by the rule change include nonfat dry milk, eggnog, half-and-half and sour cream.

Ever hear the one about how the well‐dressed accomplice caused a scene at the front door of the bank, while the masked robbers snuck in through the back and made off with the loot? Let that be a lesson to us: when we all train our eyes in one direction, we may miss the real danger lurking behind.

As USDA appears to be ramping up a pre‐release publicity campaign on the new poultry inspection system, the agency is struggling with the commotion at the front door, where the food inspector’s union is firmly opposed to changes that could make the slaughter inspection business even more dangerous for employees. The agency continues to try to highlight the cost savings to companies and to the government, without acknowledging the harm that could be done to workers and consumers. But there is another equally troubling element in the proposal: that there is no requirement for plants to test for the pathogenic organisms that are nearly omnipresent in raw poultry.

When USDA proposed its poultry inspection overhaul in 2011, unions were right to be concerned. The agency’s changes are both serious and sweeping: in addition to dispensing with much of the existing testing protocols, they propose to reduce inspectors and increase speed on the slaughter lines, and to shift responsibilities in the sorting room from inspectors to plant employees without requiring training, among others. Many of those changes would make a dangerous business even more so, and would do it without waiting for the findings of even a single long‐range study from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration about how it would affect slaughterhouse workers.

This is no small affront, given that these workers serve as the first line of defense for ensuring that safe food reaches consumers (just as farm workers do for produce). But it is not just workers who should be concerned about the possible rules—anyone who eats poultry should be concerned about the proposal on public health grounds.

The Obama Administration’s idea of “modernizing” poultry inspection is to permit each regulated company to decide what it wants to test for and how frequently. If you liked the results of letting banks regulate themselves, you may like the results of having big poultry companies controlling efforts to prevent contamination of meat and poultry. The tests and results would vary by company, making meaningful comparison impossible and limiting USDA’s ability to assess its program’s effectiveness or conduct strategic planning and reduce threats.

These threats aren’t theoretical either. Hundreds of outbreaks and thousands of illness each year are linked to poultry, many from dangerous bugs like Salmonella and Campylobacter. CSPI’s recent report, Risky Meat, showed chicken and turkey on the top two tiers of a risk pyramid that ranked not just foodborne illness, but severe foodborne illness. That means the illnesses linked to poultry aren’t just inconvenient—they are far more likely to require hospitalization than many of the other meats we commonly eat. By the way, do you think USDA will stop at poultry or is this the future of beef and pork inspection too?

In 2011, Congress passed an important law to improve the safety of foods that FDA regulates (foods other than meat and poultry). It’s high time that Congress updated the Poultry Inspection Act, which was passed more than 40 years ago, and makes USDA more prevention‐oriented as well.

But rather than making wholesale change through rulemaking—and doing so in a sly manner that makes consumer advocates immediately wary that they have been disenfranchised—wouldn’t it be better to gather all stakeholders together to begin the difficult, necessary process of making meat and poultry safer? For an administration that lauds transparency, it is shocking for USDA to propose dramatic changes to poultry inspection without even the benefit of a single public hearing.

If the goal of the project is truly to maximize public health, the agency should institute each change separately, spacing them out and gathering data at each new phase. It is not only common sense, but good science to assess each new change individually in representative slaughterhouses to determine if it has a measurable effect—positive or negative— on the frequency of contaminated birds.

If the experience of passing a new food safety law for FDA taught us anything, it is that consumers, industry, and regulators can work together to further the goals of public health. Similar consensus was reached in the mid‐1990s, when then‐Secretary Dan Glickman convened all stakeholders in a series of public meetings to map out a modern program for preventive controls in meat and poultry products.

When all parties trust that they share a common goal—to prevent illness—alliances like these can move mountains of public health policy in the right direction.

When consumer and worker advocates speak out so strongly against a proposal like the one put forth by USDA to overhaul poultry, it should give everyone pause. Rather than speeding up the process and dashing for the getaway car, the agency should slow down and heed the alarms of its stakeholders.

On Monday, the department report the source of the E. coli illnesses was ground beef served by a local Bryan-College Station metro area restaurant.

The investigation has determined that five confirmed cases and five probable cases of E. coli O157:H7 infection are associated with an outbreak that occurred during the week of April 15-22.

The local restaurant is said to be cooperating with the investigation, which may have involved such contributing causes as not cooking to a proper temperature or cross-contamination.

Employees and health department monitors have implemented control measures such as mandatory glove use to prevent further cases.

Adults who became ill recovered without hospitalization, but the two College Station boys required extensive care at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.