Holes Cannot Be Tolerated in U.S. Food Safety System

How safe is the nation’s food supply? That question comes up again with yet another incident of food contamination. This time as many as 9,000 students and school employees in Los Angeles may have been exposed to the Hepatitis A virus when they consumed frozen strawberry desserts late last week. The fruit came from the same batch implicated in a hepatitis outbreak in Michigan early last month. Federal officials suggested Wednesday that the problem might not be limited to school food and that some contaminated strawberries may have gotten into food products sold to the public at large.

The source of the highly contagious but seldom fatal virus may prove elusive because the U.S. food supply system, once considered the world’s safest, has evolved into a complex global chain of food suppliers and processors that is increasingly difficult for government to monitor.

Since 1993 a series of food poisonings--from bacteria, viruses and chemicals--has posed new challenges to public health officials. Reforms are needed. The Clinton administration last year announced a new system for guarding against potentially deadly bacteria in meat and poultry. But rigorous safeguards are needed for a variety of foods. Contamination is difficult to pinpoint, especially with food-borne viruses such as hepatitis A.

Take the frozen strawberry desserts in question. They were served March 25-28 in 12 elementary, two middle and three high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The berries were harvested in spring of 1996 in Mexico. Andrew & Williamson Sales Co., a San Diego food processor, prepared and froze the fruit. In December the frozen strawberries were shipped to various destinations, including some in Southern California, for bulk distribution as part of a school lunch program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Wawona Farms in Clovis, Calif., packed the strawberries into cups earlier this year and shipped the dessert to schools. The strawberries could have been contaminated anywhere along this chain.

Hepatitis A can be transmitted through tainted water or ice or through contamination on the hands of food workers. Mexican government officials deny that contaminated irrigation water is to blame. They point the finger at U.S. processors, who point back the other way.

The use of Mexican-grown fruit was in violation of USDA requirements in the first place. The federal agency requires that only U.S.-grown commodities be used in the lunch program. In the furor over the outbreak of hepatitis, the president of Andrew & Williamson, the San Diego packer, resigned Wednesday.

Federal officials alerted Los Angeles school officials last Thursday to the problem of tainted strawberries, but the public was not notified until Tuesday. The chain of communication broke down as school and county health officials conferred on what to do. Why? In a situation like this, the public, parents especially, should be notified immediately, through the schools or any other method.

Inoculations for those who ate the dessert are considered the best solution. But the inoculations, while controlling the virus, do nothing to resolve the overall problem of food contamination, which is aggravated by underfunded programs scattered through three federal agencies. Strict oversight of the source of foods and the conditions under which they are cultivated or manufactured must be expanded and regulations toughly enforced. In this case, the problem appears to have been caught early. But the holes in the nation’s oversight system should be plugged. Now. The safety of America’s food supply must be better protected.