Food Poisoning, Foodborne Illness Information and Research : International Food Safety Network : BarfBlog

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Julie Schmit and Elizabeth Weise report in USA Today this morning that retailers have been slow to pull Castleberry's products that may be infected with botulism. The Food and Drug Administration reported that out of 3,700 stores the FDA visited in recent days, 7% had recalled cans for sale. North Carolina officials visited 250 stores the past two days and found four of 10 still selling recalled products.

"People just don't seem to be taking (the recall) seriously," says Robert Brackett, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. He says consumers may be suffering "recall fatigue," given the rash of recalls the past year for spinach, carrot juice, lettuce, peanut butter, pet food and other products. "That's a real phenomenon. If people aren't getting sick or their family isn't, they think 'Oh, it's not going to happen to me.' "

Research shows that people stop paying attention to recalls if there are a large number in a short time span, says Douglas Powell, professor of food safety at Kansas State University.

Retailers may also not have heard about the recall, Brackett says, or they may be confused about what's been recalled.

I told Elizabeth yesterday that public communications about such undertaking must be rapid, reliable, repeated and relevant, and that the produce outbreaks of 2006 marked significant changes in how stories were being told on Internet-based networking like YouTube, wikipedia, and blogs.

Producers, processors, retailers and regulators of agricultural commodities not only need to be seen -- and actually -- responding to food safety issues in conventional media, they must now pay particular attention to the myriad of Internet-based social networking sites that allow individuals to act as their own media outlet. Further, proactive producers, regulators and others in the farm-to-fork food safety system will become comfortable with the directness -- and especially the speed -- of new Internet-based media.