Looking forward to future food safety reform

23-Mar-2010 - Last updated on 23-Mar-2010 at 17:40 GMT

Now that Congress has finally reached a conclusion on health care reform, could food safety reform be a little closer? Director of food safety solutions at DNV Kathy Wybourn thinks so.

The Food Safety Enhancement Act passed the House in July, while its companion bill in the Senate, the Food Safety Modernization Act, passed unanimously through the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee back in November. Since then, it has been awaiting a full hearing in the Senate, and some commentators have said the delay has been exacerbated by other big ticket items being debated in Congress.

But Wybourn said that legislation is expected to be on the President’s desk by the summer.

She told FoodNavigator-USA.com: “We need to change something. We can’t keep seeing the same thing over and over.”

The US food industry has been subject to a spate of food safety recalls, including the ongoing hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP) recall, and the peanut product recall that involved thousands of products last year, after salmonella-tainted peanuts sickened hundreds and killed nine. Calls from industry to update food safety laws have intensified as consumer confidence in food companies has gone down and recall costs have mounted.

Wybourn said: “I think the laws need to be updated, modernized to current times, and they haven’t. But I don’t think it’s going to be Washington alone.”

Standardizing food safety

While she supports granting the FDA additional powers, Wybourn is also a strong advocate of standardized food safety practices and checks across the food industry, led by industry.

“It’s getting everybody aligned with food safety,” she said, adding: “Don’t fight standardization: it’s necessary.”

The seriousness of problems with the US food safety system was underscored earlier this month, when a report showed that the United States was among the top five worst offenders for food safety incidents in the world – alongside China, Turkey, Iran and Spain.

Wybourn said she thought most Americans would be surprised to find the United States on the list.

“I think the focus is on imports into the US,” she said. “…The perception from consumers is that imports are less safe than domestic food, but I think it’s a perception and I don’t know if it’s supported by stats.”

Of course, imported foods do pose food safety risks, and it is impossible for FDA officials to inspect all foreign facilities, but as the Plos One report showed, the United States also has its own food safety issues to deal with.