Transparency In Food Recalls: Important On Both Sides Of The Atlantic

In her blog at eFoodAlert.com, Phyllis Entis today discussed France’s approach, or lack thereof, to letting the food-consuming public know about foodborne threats to their health. The story arose from an outbreak of staphylococcal enterotoxin contained within three batches of cheese that were made using unpasteurized milk (aka “raw milk”) from a single milk storage tank. Entis writes:

The outbreak report that appeared last week does not discuss the possible source of the bacterial contamination it could have been a single mastitic cow, a farm worker, or even a worker at the cheese manufacturer. Instead, the authors closed their outbreak report with the following self-congratulatory statement:

“Finally, this study illustrates that the French national surveillance system is able to detect rare events. The staphylococcal food poisoning outbreaks linked to SEE ingestion described here were quickly identified through a close collaboration between the Health Emergency Mission, the National institute for public health surveillance and the EU-RL with laboratories involved in food surveillance for coagulase-positive staphylococci and staphylococcal enterotoxins and the good cooperation of all parties involved. The rapid recall of contaminated cheese batches by the French Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fishery prevented further cases.”

This is not an insignificant concern; and despite our state and federal governments’ more liberal approaches to the dissemination of information to the public, its not a concern that is relevent only abroad. And its also not a concern only relevent to the government. The free and efficient flow of information to the public about a potential health threat is also a duty owed by the companies that make defective products.

To read the rest of story, please go to: Food Poison Journal