Food Safety and Environmental Health Blog : Disease Prevention, Public Health, Sanitation Information & Analysis : Environ Health Associates

In Bill Marler's blog below, he quotes Bill Bagby of Tiny Greens, who sickened scores of people for 4 months with his contaminated sprouts.

http://www.marlerblog.com/legal-cases/bill-bagby-and-tiny-greens-sprout-farm-are-full-of-well-a-fecal-bacteria-salmonella---sprouts-are-ki/

Mr. Bagby says,

"Sprouts are kind of a magical thing," says Bagby, owner of Tiny Greens, a sprout farm in Urbana, Ill. "In terms of vitamins they're just off the charts compared to normal produce."

If this is magic, it is Black Magic of the worst kind. It is not really magic though...its make-believe. And the motive is as always… money. I wonder if Mr. Bagby believes his own statements about the health benefits vs. risk of sprouts? Does he feel eating raw sprouts is worth the risk of losing one’s kidneys?

This is the same ploy we hear from the raw milk industry. If Mr. Bagby was doing all he could to make a safe product, I might have some sympathy for him, but he operated an unsafe and unsanitary operation according to FDA. There is no excuse for the use of unsafe compost.

No responsible grower of any produce item I have ever met would do such a thing.

Mr. Bagby continues to mislead the public, he gives no evidence that his products are safer today than they were yesterday; having an "audit" once a year is not a food safety program. The changes he should have made were likely obvious and likely were put off, that is until he sickened consumers.

FDA’s public stand on sprouts is saddening. These officials know full well that this commodity is too risky to consume, they do not eat them, themselves. Yet, they avoid confronting the issues. After the terrible tragedy in Europe, it is now time for a shot across the bow to the entire sprout industry. We need FDA to say "get rid of the unsafe operations in your industry, make your product safely or we will put you out of business" and not, "it’s an individual decision ". When unsafe cars or tires kill people, we don't hear Washington folks saying "buying these unsafe cars and tires is an individual decision". Its not a matter of "tastes good", or "good for you", these products are too difficult to make safely, even under the best of conditions, and they pose a continuing public health threat.

No respectable, conscientious retailer should ever offer sprouts for sale. A firm like Jimmy Johns seems to me, totally reckless. Even after several illnesses from their sandwiches, they continue to offer sprouts. So I must conclude it’s a popular item and thus the firm is willing to take the risk.

Tiny Greens constituted a public health hazard for at least 4 months when it caused the last outbreak and so my feeling is the operator cannot be relied on in the future. Does he expect his auditor to stop him the next time he takes a short cut with food safety? The next time it could be devastating, knowing what we know now about the ability of the most severe strains of E. coli to contaminate these products.

I am sure FDA is hoping that the sprout industry will "kill itself off", which I believe will eventually happen, but how many consumers will have to die before our public health folks will tell the American public the plain truth, "raw sprouts are too dangerous to eat".

Lets stop all the make-believe.

Hemorrhaging to death is not worth the nutritional benefits of anything...period.

The Chicago Tribune asks, What should Consumers Do About Sprouts?

The answer is easy, "don;t eat them".

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-sprouts-safety-consumers-20110611,0,4296792.story

The Chicago Tribune tried to portray Mr. Bagby and company in a balanced way, but I do not think he deserves a favorable spotlight for his "magical" views.

As the result of political and economic pressures, FDA will likely not have the resources it needs to carry out its responsibilities under the FSMA. What this means is that more responsibility will be placed on the food industry to self-govern. The various industry initiatives will need to expand to make up the difference.

Some of the things industry can do in cooperation with FDA include:

• Expand education
• Create transparency of food safety systems and risk assessments to the consumer level
• Continue the research, development and application of food safety technology
• Expand testing of products
• Foster a Watchdog/Sentinel role
• Outreach and assistance to the mid sized and small operations
• Expand and apply traceability systems

Former ranking Republican Jack Kingston has called the U.S. food supply “99.99 percent” safe. He goes on to say “We challenge anyone to find a function of government that has a success rate better than 99.99% which the food supply, based on the Obama Administration’s own estimates, currently maintains,” said Kingston spokesman Chris Crawford.

In contrast, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last month that about one in six Americans gets sick, and 3,000 die, from foodborne diseases each year.

if .01 % of the food supply is unsafe, as Mr. Crawford explains, this would mean about 1 million meals a day eaten in the US are unsafe.

The impact to public health aside, the food industry suffers anytime there is a food recall or an outbreak, and there are political and economic outcomes, as we see today in Europe.

Regardless, industry must step forward in an even greater way than currently. I believe we are up to the challenge, but we need coordination and strengthening of the scientific basis for risk assessments and a better way to measure risk-reductions.

If FDA cannot fully apply its powers, it makes sense for industry and FDA to work together in new ways. Lets spend the money that is available in ways that will have a beneficial effect. Creating more bureaucracy is not the answer. We need a leader that both industry and FDA can trust, that can forge the type of cooperative spirit needed. That person has not emerged, yet.