Recalls

  • Tweeting about Food Safety

    Posted: February 24th, 2009 - 1:14am by Michelle Mazur

    Do you remember how you first heard about the latest round of Salmonella in the peanut butter?  Was it on the evening news, in the paper, or did you hear about it through Facebook or Twitter?  If you’re in the under 30 crowd you might fit into the latter category.  Social networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are increasingly being utilized for up-to-the-minute recall information.

    During the recent Salmonella outbreak, the United States Department of Health and Human Services - specifically the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - engaged in a heavy social media push to inform citizens about the health risks and product recalls.  As a result, the CDC Social Media Center was created as a central hub for harnessing the power of social networking to spread recall information.

    Twitter is one of the sites currently used in the assortment of links.   Twitter allows users to “follow” one another’s “tweets” about what they do during the day.  The website is on the rise among medical professionals and there are accounts for all ranges of industry available.  Why not food safety?

    Federal health agencies have been experimenting with new Internet tools, dubbed Web 2.0, that make it easier to deliver information directly to the public. The "Health 2.0" movement got a big boost with the arrival of President Barack Obama, who is pushing federal agencies to use the tools to make the federal government more transparent and participatory.

    Current news about FDA recalls can be found @FDArecalls and public health updates from the CDC can be found @CDCemergency. The only snag is you have to sign up in order to receive tweets from the FDA, but hey, its free.  After all, you’re no one if you’re not on Twitter.

     

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    Salmonella  |  2 Comments
    Cdc, Facebook, Fda, Food Recall, Recalls, Social Media, Twitter
  • Salmonella recalls grow; Obama orders review of FDA operations

    Posted: February 2nd, 2009 - 10:34am by Doug Powell

    As the number of recalled products topped 800, U.S. President Barack Obama said this morning he is ordering a “complete review” of the Food and Drug Administration after it failed to detect shipments of salmonella-contaminated peanut products.

    In an interview taped Sunday and aired this morning on the television gabfest, Today, Obama said the agency’s failure to recognize and intercept the products was only the latest of numerous “instances over the last several years” in which “the FDA has not been able to catch some of these things as quickly as I expect them to catch.”

    “At bare minimum, we should be able to count on our government keeping our kids safe when they eat peanut butter.”

    USA Today today reported that the recall, one of the largest ever, started with bulk peanut butter, spread to crackers and cookies and has engulfed products as diverse as kettle corn, pad Thai and trail mix, with over 800 recalls and many more expected this week.

    Robert Brackett, senior vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said anecdotal evidence indicates that sales of all peanut-related products, even unaffected peanut butters, are slipping, adding,

    "All it takes is a little company, and it has a huge ripple effect.”

    The GMA says Peanut Corporation of America supplied less than 1% of peanut products sold in the U.S. Still, the FDA says the company has more than 300 customers, many of whom used PCA's products as an ingredient.

    Brackett fears consumers will tire of checking recall lists and begin shunning anything with peanuts. Past food scares have shown that to be true.

    When asked by CBC Radio in Sudbury, Ontario this morning, “what’s a consumer to do,” I said,

    “Avoid the stuff for now. It may not be fair, but the recall list is growing so fast, it’s prudent. And now folks have an idea what people with peanut allergies have to go through.”
     

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    Salmonella  |  0 Comments
    Cupcake, Obama, Peanut, Peanut Corporation Of America, Recalls
  • Most recalled meat is never recovered

    Posted: December 3rd, 2007 - 5:13pm by Doug Powell

    Yesterday, Bill Marler listed the top 20 E. coli-in-beef outbreaks and recalls in the U.S. for 2007.

    Apparently, most of that meat is either eaten, or never recovered.

    That's what Julie Schmit and Barbara Hansen concluded in USA Today today, after a review of recall data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

    For 73 meat recalls this year and last, recovery rates per recall averaged 44%, but for five recalls that followed reports of consumer illness, recovery rates per recall averaged just 20%.

    Kenneth Petersen, USDA assistant administrator, said that recalls spawned by reports of illness have low recovery rates because weeks or months can pass between when a product is produced, someone gets sick and illness is linked with food; recalls resulting from the USDA's product testing tend to result in higher recovery rates.

    There have been 54 meat recalls this year, up from 34 last year. For the most recent recalls, recovery rates are not yet available.

    To get more consumers to check homes for recalled meats, the USDA next year plans to publicize names of retailers selling meat that was later recalled.

    The story explains that on Sept. 29, Topps Meat recalled 21.7 million pounds of frozen hamburger because of potential contamination with the deadly E. coli O157:H7 bacteria. The recall, the second-biggest ever for ground beef, was well publicized. Still, New Jersey officials found 141 boxes of recalled burgers in 12 state stores about a month after the recall. Some retailers said they didn't know about the recall, says New Jersey consumer affairs spokesman Jeff Lamm.

    Recall fatigue is becoming a serious issue. In July, USA Today reported that retailers have been slow to pull Castleberry's products that may be infected with botulism.

    As I said in July, public communications about recalls need to be much more than a press release -- they must be rapid, reliable, repeated and relevant, and that the produce outbreaks of 2006 marked significant changes in how stories were being told using Internet-based networking like YouTube, wikipedia, and blogs.
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    E. coli, Food Safety Policy  |  0 Comments
    Meat, Recalls