Food Registry

The FDA takes a step toward improved safety, but Congress still needs to act.

NEW POWERS for the federal government to further protect a relatively safe food supply reside in a bill that passed the House in July. The Food Safety Enhancement Act would require companies to develop procedures for conducting hazard analysis and instituting preventive controls. The Food and Drug Administration could gain access to those records and order product recalls, if necessary. The secretary of health and human services would establish a system to trace the origins of food from farm to fork. Unfortunately, the legislation now sits parked in the Senate.

But here's a bit of good news: The FDA instituted an online portal last week to flag contamination in the food supply before it has a chance to spread. The Reportable Food Registry was mandated by a 2007 law signed by President George W. Bush. Its stated purpose is to provide a "reliable mechanism to track patterns of adulteration in food." As we have seen one too many times over the past couple of years, the lack of such a reliable mechanism has helped produce a rogues' gallery of products that have sickened consumers.

From now on, facilities that "manufacture, process or hold food for consumption in the United States" must report to the FDA through the registry within 24 hours of finding a "reasonable probability that an article of food will cause severe health problems or death to a person or animal." Bacterial contamination, allergen mislabeling or elevated levels of certain chemical components are among the reasons for reporting potentially dangerous products to the FDA.

Would that this early-warning system had been in place sooner. Remember the alleged actions of the Peanut Corporation of America? Earlier this year, the FDA revealed that the now-defunct Lynchburg, Va., company knowingly shipped salmonella-tainted peanut products 12 times between 2007 and 2008 from its Blakely, Ga., facility. This led to one of the largest product recalls in U.S. history and at least nine deaths.

The episode also exposed the troubling gaps in safeguarding the nation's food supply. The reportable food registry is a useful new tool for the FDA. But the agency needs the other tools in the Food Safety Enhancement Act if it is to stand a chance at stopping food-borne outbreaks before they start.