Editor’s note: The podcast Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta checks out the medical science behind some of life’s mysteries huge and little. You can listen to episodes here.
(CNN)– The existing list of food remembers is long and growing: a popular brand name of deli meats; slivered onions served atop a popular hamburger; frozen waffles and bagged natural carrots sold under different brand names at grocery stores coast to coast; and most recently, ready-to-eat meat and poultry offered both in stores and online.
Some food remembers have actually caused illness, hospitalizations and deaths, while other recalls were introduced before anybody was affected.
The concern of food security might be top of mind as a lot of us prepare to take a seat with friends and family over vacation meals.
With all these current recalls– and the break outs of disease and deaths that are linked to a few of them– it might appear that our food supply is getting less safe. Are these break outs ending up being more frequent?
“I believe the short answer is no,” food security professional Dr. Donald Schaffner recently informed CNN Chief Medical Reporter Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his podcast Chasing Life. Schaffner, a department chair and prominent professor at Rutgers University, has been studying foodborne health problems for decades. He also cohosts the podcast “Risky or Not?”
“I think break outs are random occasions– and sometimes random occasions are spread apart, and in some cases they come close together,” he said. “I actually believe it’s just coincidence.”
Not that Schaffner thinks there isn’t room for improvement. “(Some) people like to say we have the most safe food supply worldwide. I am not one of those individuals,” he stated.
You can listen to the complete episode here.
Despite that view, Schaffner kept in mind that the Food Security Modernization Act, signed by President Barack Obama in 2011, caused a general more secure food supply by creating more than a dozen new rules governing areas such as good production practices, agricultural water, hygienic transport, hazard analysis and mitigation techniques to secure our food.
But these guidelines have actually taken a while to get completely fleshed out, completed and executed. For example, the Produce Security guideline, which was designed to prevent scenarios like the slivered onions issue, was put in place in 2016.
“When those guidelines were first passed or first established, they were the first regulations for on-farm food safety that farmers had ever seen, right? Therefore, it’s taking a while for them to kind of get up to speed with what’s going on there,” he said.
Another element causing more recalls– and perhaps the understanding of less-safe food– has been progress in the innovation used to expose a break out and link info about its possible source.
“The CDC is improving and better at discovering break outs thanks to advances in whole genome sequencing,” Schaffner said. “It might have been in the past we had break outs like this, however we might never connect them together, due to the fact that we didn’t understand that all of these various people in all of these different states all got sick around the same time from eating the exact same food.”
All this information may leave your questioning how to browse food recalls. Schaffner has these 5 tips.
Some recalls don’t have any diseases related to them.
“Just because a food has actually been remembered, it does not suggest that anyone has been made ill by that food,” Schaffner said through e-mail. “Most recalls are not connected with outbreaks or illnesses.”
Break outs are various. “When you have a break out, you know for sure that these individuals ate these foods,” Schaffner stated.
When people first begin getting sick, public health experts may not know which food item is the culprit and which pathogen– leading suspects include E. coli, listeria and salmonella– may be to blame.
“As soon as the epidemiologists figure it out, there is often a recall,” Schaffner stated. “We saw this with the recent Boar’s Head listeria event. We likewise saw this with McDonald’s slivered onions, however in (that) case the recall was only within the restaurant market because none of the onions were sold directly to customers.”
He stated there might be situations where we have a break out and we never discover what the cause is, “in which case we do not have a recall.”
The US Food and Drug Administration and the US Department of Agriculture– which share oversight of food safety– have comparable recall structures, Schaffner said.
“It’s Class I, II and III depending upon the seriousness,” he explained. “The most severe type of a recall is when we have a strong suspicion that a pathogenic microbe may be in a food– therefore that’s a Class I remember. And we want to take all deliberate speed with that.”
Class I recalls “suggest a sensible possibility of major health effects or death,” Schaffner stated by means of e-mail.
Recalls can be started for reasons not related to pathogens.
“We can likewise have recalls for prospective irritants; so, we may have peanuts in a cookie that doesn’t state peanuts on the label,” he said. “You can likewise have recalls for labels that are incorrect: The incorrect kind of food was put in the package or the weight of the food in the bundle is not what it says on the label.”
In most cases, the business in question chooses to initiate a recall without being ordered to do so, Schaffner said.
The FDA, which is responsible for managing practically 80% of the food supply, gained the power to order a business to do a recall with the Food Safety Modernization Act, Schaffner stated. “But the firm seldom does so due to the fact that the overwhelming bulk of companies will do a voluntary recall when they find an issue,” he said.
Schaffner noted that unlike the FDA, the Food Security and Inspection Service, or FSIS– the firm within the USDA that supervises the safety of meat, poultry and egg products– does not have the power to order a company to remember a product.
You can remain on top of recalls by registering for signals.
“(The) FDA offers a recall membership service and so does USDA FSIS,” Schaffner said. “And both firms also note remembers on their (particular) sites.”
We hope these 5 pointers assist you remain safe this holiday season and beyond. Listen to the full episode here.
Food recalls seem to be happening more frequently than ever. An expert explains why recalls take place and the actions you can require to keep your family safe.
