The following MSNBC story about caterers having the highest risk is right on.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38420815/ns/health-food_safety/
This has also been my experience as an investigator. The reasons for this include time and temperature abuse due to large batch cooking in advance of service sometimes 48 hours in advance, excessive handling of ready to eat foods (NoV), and facilities…
Beth Bland of the Goegia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association makes some interesting points in her comments to the FDA. See:
http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#documentDetail?R=0900006480b1eb50
The association voices the opinion of many that third party audit schemes have taken a life of their own and now constitute a greater burden for the primary producer than is necessary to ensure food safety.
So now we have an idea what eliminating health inspections is all about in Florida. The republican congressman from Florida who chairs the House Health Care Appropriations Committee (vice chair), a Mr. Frishe, says he has gone through a kitchen before and thus is a qualified health inspector.
Further, Frishe sees no reason DCF and AHCA workers can’t inspect…
Food safety has risen to a mainstream issue in the last few years. The reasons behind the rising interest of the public have to do with increasing risks. These risks have resulted in numerous contaminated products, hunderds of large recalls, billions in losses, hunderds of millions in lawsuits and thousands of illness and deaths. How is it possible that our fourth largest…
Please see the article from Bites, below, thanks again to Doug Powell at Kansas State.
Where are our US public health scientists when food safety/public health regulatory agencies get in a corner? They just do not show up on the scene to take a stand against the political pressure from industry. The US public health…
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Recent statements by several experts about the legitimacy of third party audits are missing the point. Third party audits are far from Ponzi schemes. They act to protect the buyer when they are realistically representative of the safety of foods and the buyer uses then as a basis for buying decisions. If there is a…
Inspections during Foodborne Illness Outbreaks
When a public health agency becomes aware of an outbreak of foodborne illness, they put into place interventions to stop the transmission. Central to that effort is an environmental assessment referred to as an inspection. Companies may also employ third party inspectors during outbreaks to determine the strength of prevention…
In the absence of food safety regulations in many commodities or the lack of oversight in general, companies have turned to the private regulation of the food supply. On an individual and voluntary basis, dozens of auditing firms and hundreds of private parties are looking closely at the safety of thousands of suppliers. The supplier-food…
With both the New York Times and the Atlanta Journal Constitution reporting on inspections and audits, audit company auditors and the third party food safety scheme are coming under fire. There is ample evidence that both the third party audit model and regulatory inspection model have deficiencies, as brought out by the most recent PCA incident…