[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
REVIEW OF THE INDUSTRY RESPONSE TO THE SAFETY OF FRESH AND FRESH-CUT
PRODUCE
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HORTICULTURE AND ORGANIC AGRICULTURE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 15, 2007
__________
Serial No. 110-23
Printed for the use of the Committee on Agriculture
www.agriculture.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE
COLLIN C. PETERSON, Minnesota, Chairman
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia
Vice Chairman Ranking Minority Member
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
BOB ETHERIDGE, North Carolina FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa JERRY MORAN, Kansas
JOE BACA, California ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
DENNIS A. CARDOZA, California TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia SAM GRAVES, Missouri
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia JO BONNER, Alabama
STEPHANIE HERSETH SANDLIN, South MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
Dakota STEVE KING, Iowa
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas MARILYN N. MUSGRAVE, Colorado
JIM COSTA, California RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas
JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr.,
BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana Louisiana
NANCY E. BOYDA, Kansas JOHN R. ``Randy'' KUHL, Jr., New
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio York
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina
KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
EARL POMEROY, North Dakota JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska
JOHN BARROW, Georgia KEVIN McCARTHY, California
NICK LAMPSON, Texas TIM WALBERG, Michigan
JOE DONNELLY, Indiana
TIM MAHONEY, Florida
Professional Staff
Robert L. Larew, Chief of Staff
Andrew W. Baker, Chief Counsel
William E. O'Conner, Jr., Minority Staff Director
.........................................................
__________
Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture
DENNIS A. CARDOZA, California, Chairman
BOB ETHERIDGE, North Carolina RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas
LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee Ranking Minority Member
TIM MAHONEY, Florida JOHN R. ``RANDY'' KUHL, Jr., New
JOHN BARROW, Georgia York
KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina
KEVIN McCARTHY, California
K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
Keith Jones, Subcommittee Staff Director
.........................................................
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Cardoza, Hon. Dennis A., a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, opening statement......................... 1
Prepared statement........................................... 50
Neugebauer, Hon. Randy, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Texas, opening statement.............................. 3
Prepared statement........................................... 55
Peterson, Hon. Collin C., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Minnesota, prepared statement......................... 56
Goodlatte, Hon. Bob, a Representative in Congress from the
Commonwealth of Virginia, prepared statement................... 59
Witnesses
Day, Mr. Lloyd, Administrator, Agricultural Marketing Service,
United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C....... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 61
Acheson, Dr. David, M.D. F.R.C.P., Assistant Commissioner for
Food Protection, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Rockville,
Maryland, opening statement.................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 66
Whitaker, Dr. Robert J., Ph.D., Vice President, Processing and
Technology, NewStar Fresh Foods, LLC, on behalf of United Fresh
Produce Association, Salinas, California....................... 27
Prepared statement........................................... 77
Pezzini, Mr. Joe, Vice President of Operations, Ocean Mist Farms,
on behalf of Western Growers Association, Castroville,
California..................................................... 30
Prepared statement........................................... 85
Roberts, Dr. Martha R., Ph.D., Personal Assistant to the
Director, Florida Experiment Station, University of Florida, on
behalf of the Florida Tomato Exchange, Tallahassee, Florida.... 32
Prepared statement........................................... 91
Christie, Ms. Lorna, Vice President, Produce Marketing
Association, Newark, Delaware.................................. 34
Prepared statement........................................... 99
DeWaal, Ms. Caroline Smith, Director of Food Safety, Center for
Science in the Public Interest, Washington, D.C................ 35
Prepared statement........................................... 102
Submitted Material
Day, Mr. Lloyd, Administrator, Agricultural Marketing Service,
United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C....... 113
HEARING TO REVIEW THE INDUSTRY RESPONSE TO THE SAFETY OF FRESH AND
FRESH-CUT PRODUCE
----------
TUESDAY, MAY 15, 2007
House of Representatives,
Committee on Agriculture,
Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in
Room 1300 of the Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Dennis
Cardoza [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Members present: Cardoza, Etheridge, Davis, Barrow,
Gillibrand, Neugebauer, Kuhl, McCarthy, and Conaway.
Staff present: Adam Durand, Scott Kuschmider, John Riley,
Sharon Rusnak, Debbie Smith, John Goldberg, Pete Thomson, and
Jamie Weyer.
STATEMENT OF HON. DENNIS CARDOZA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Mr. Cardoza. Good morning. We will call to order this
hearing of the Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic
Agriculture to review the industry response to the safety of
fresh and fresh-cut produce, and it will all now come to order.
I want to thank you all for attending this important hearing,
and I want to thank the industry and also the consumer groups
for being here today.
This hearing is being called because maintaining the
integrity of our nation's food supply is of paramount concern
to us at this time. Not only mine as chairman of this
subcommittee but as a consumer and as a parent as well.
Americans spend over $1 trillion in food per year, both at home
and in restaurants, and they place their faith in the
agricultural industry and the federal and state regulatory
agencies to ensure that those products are safe to consume.
Generally, our food supply consistently meets high
benchmarks for success in safety, but there are, of course,
instances where the system fails, whether it be spinach,
tomatoes, meat, poultry, or countless other products, foodborne
illness can strike viciously and without warning.
Ladies and gentlemen, I should know. I was personally
affected by the salmonella outbreak in peanut butter earlier
this year. So one can imagine my displeasure to read recent
reports that the FDA knew this particular peanut butter plant
had a spotty safety record, yet they continued to certify its
compliance with food safety measures.
Part of the problem may be that there are currently 15
different regulatory agencies tasked with monitoring the safety
and security of our food supply. From the Food and Drug
Administration to USDA to Health and Human Services, each year
thousands of federal employees inspect, verify, and approve all
aspects of the food distribution chain.
Together with their state counterparts, these agencies
create arguably the safest food supply in the world. However,
when the rare crack in the system occurs, the overall integrity
and consistency of food safety in this country can be
devastated. Families across the country who consume tainted
products are unfairly put in harm's way, and the general
public's confidence in the food supply is shaken to the core.
Furthermore, farmers and processors are often unable to
recover from the financial strains of severe market disruptions
from the outbreaks. None of these consequences were more
apparent than during the September 2006 E.coli outbreak
associated with the consumption of fresh-cut spinach. Many in
this room were directly involved in these days and weeks that
followed that crisis. This response to the spinach outbreak was
a wakeup call for both the federal government and the fresh
produce industry.
For the government, it became painfully obvious that the
continued lack of support for specialty crops in the farm and
food safety programs is taking its toll. Specialty crops have
grown to nearly 50 percent of the farm gate value of American
agriculture, yet very few federal dollars are spent on shoring
up research, food safety, or best management practices for the
industry.
If we are serious about preventing further outbreaks, this
equity can no longer be ignored. For the produce industry,
while I must applaud them for fully cooperating with the E.coli
investigation and trace-back attempts, it was apparent that
previous practices designed to prevent outbreaks of foodborne
illnesses fell short.
The fresh produce industry has rested for too long on ill-
defined and unchecked management practices that left holes in
the accountability of the entire system. However, there has
been significant progress by the fresh produce industry, and
their actions should serve as a model to their fellow
commodities who have also fallen short in recent times.
Shortly after the spinach crisis, the affected industries
in California organized the California Spinach and Leafy Green
Marketing Agreement, which licenses first handlers to certify
compliance with best management practices for fresh produce.
The agreement is a solid first step to strengthening industry
practices and to quell consumer doubt in domestic fresh
produce.
But food safety standards for fresh produce should not be
limited to just those producers and handlers in California. If
proven to be effective, the best management practices in
California's Spinach and Leafy Green Marketing Agreement should
serve as a nationwide model for improving food safety.
I am pleased to have Joe Pezzini, Vice President of Ocean
Mist Farms and chairman of the agreement here to elaborate on
food safety measures included in this agreement.
Overall, I believe consumer confidence in fresh produce is
back and stronger than ever. Americans recognize and appreciate
the benefits of fresh fruits and vegetables in their diets and
have responded well to the efforts of regulators and the
industry to correct flaws in their food safety surveillance.
But unfortunately it will only take one more incident to break
down this progress, to move us back to square one, and to
revive the unproven claims that our food supply is susceptible
to dangerous pathogens.
I remain extremely concerned that our food safety oversight
is spread amongst too many different agencies, creating a
systematic lack of responsibility and ownership over the food
supply. I believe that one and only one federal agency should
have responsibility for protecting the food supply.
The USDA currently has a better relationship with state
agencies and other officials on the ground level, and there
seems to be an inherent lack of understanding at FDA about the
unique growing practices of boutique crops like spinach,
lettuce, and other fresh produce, which may have significantly
hindered their ability to react quickly and confidently in a
spinach crisis.
A complete discussion of domestic food safety and reform
should include a thorough examination of feasibility of USDA's
control over this area in fruits and vegetables, in my opinion.
The spinach crisis was not the first E.coli outbreak, and it
certainly will not be the last. But as members of Congress, we
have a duty and responsibility to carefully review these
situations and to look for ways to improve the responses at the
federal government level.
I hope that we can use this hearing to gain a better
understanding of the industry response to recent food safety
concerns and continue the dialogue on strengthening domestic
food safety compliance. I appreciate the witnesses appearing
here today, and I look forward to their comments.
With that, I would like to yield to the ranking member, my
good friend, Mr. Randy Neugebauer of Texas.
STATEMENT OF HON. RANDY NEUGEBAUER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS
Mr. Neugebauer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Consumers in the
United States are fortunate to have such a safe, abundant, and
affordable supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. Sometimes we
take for granted the many fresh produce choices available in
our grocery store aisles and farmers' markets.
It takes dedicated farmers, handlers, and packers to supply
us with this variety and high quality of food, and I appreciate
those of you who have taken time away from your busy operations
to be with us today. Just as it takes a full supply chain for
growers to supply consumers with fresh produce, it also takes
an entire industry to make sure that the product is safe.
You have a good track record when it comes to producing
safe, high quality fruits and vegetables. And the industry has
responded quickly to address problems on those occasions when
food safety concerns have arisen. As producers and handlers
know firsthand, the viability of your industry requires that
you produce and sell a safe product that consumers remain
confident in the safety of your product.
I applaud produce growers and handlers for pursuing
industry-lead marketing agreements, promoting best practices,
and supporting research to increase the knowledge of how to
keep fresh vegetables and fruits safe. Others have suggested
that extensive federal programs regulation from the farm to the
table would be a better approach. However, I am concerned that
a rigid regulatory approach may not allow the industry the
flexibility to adapt to practices and to new technologies. It
may hinder growers' ability to produce the very crops that they
are trying to sell. Allowing the industry to set research-
backed standards and practices and form cooperative marketing
agreements can be an effective means to be able to ensure food
safety when backed by government verification that standards
are sound and being followed.
I would like to hear more from AMS and FDA as well as the
industry panelists on how all segments can best work together
and make effective use of resources so that consumers can
continue to be assured of the safety and quality of fresh
produce that they buy for their families.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you, Mr. Neugebauer. The chair would
request that other members submit their opening statements for
the record so that witnesses may begin their testimony and we
ensure that there is ample time for questions, and we will do
our very best to make sure that every member has time to ask
their questions today.
I anticipate that a number of the rest of the members of
the committee shall show up throughout the panel's
presentation. There are a number of other hearings that are
going on as we speak.
I would like to call up and welcome the first panel to the
table. We have with us today Administrator Lloyd Day from the
Agricultural Marketing Service, United States Department of
Agriculture in Washington, D.C. Thank you, Mr. Day. And also
Mr. David Acheson, M.D., Assistant Commissioner for Food
Protection, U.S. Food and Drug Administration from Rockville,
Maryland. Thank you, Mr. Acheson, for being here with us today.
Gentlemen, if you would please begin your testimony, and
welcome to the committee. Mr. Day, you are up first.
STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATOR LLOYD DAY, AGRICULTURAL MARKETING
SERVICE, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Mr. Day. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, good
morning and thank you for the invitation to appear before you
today. I appreciate the opportunity to share with you a brief
overview of the activities and services of USDA's Agricultural
and Marketing Service, AMS, and to be here with my colleague,
Dr. David Acheson, from FDA.
As you know, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is the
Federal agency with primary responsibility for the food safety
of horticultural products. At the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, the Food Safety and Inspection Service holds
similar responsibility for meat, poultry, and egg products. The
mission of AMS is to facilitate the strategic marketing of
products in the domestic and international marketplace. AMS is
not a food safety agency.
The agency does respond, however, to requests from
producers to support their product quality control efforts. For
example, producers have asked AMS to establish programs to
provide independent verification that FDA guidance is being
followed. For many decades, AMS has offered voluntary, user-
funded, product quality grading services as well as plant
sanitation reviews based on FDA's good manufacturing practices.
In recent years, AMS has expanded these traditional
services through the addition of audit-based programs based on
internationally recognized quality management system protocols.
Some of these newer programs incorporate food safety related
elements reflecting market demand for greater food safety
assurance as a quality attribute of products being marketed.
In the horticulture or specialty crops area, AMS product
grading, plant sanitation review, and audit-based programs are
conducted with a Federal workforce of some 800 full and part-
time employees. Additionally, AMS has cooperative agreements
with nearly all state departments of agriculture, under which
their fruit and vegetable inspectors receive training and are
granted federal licenses to assist in the delivery of AMS
services and programs, adding another 3,500 skilled
professionals to the agency's deployable workforce.
One recent example of an audit-based program fashioned
around food safety related objectives is the Good Agricultural
Practices and Good Handling Practices Audit Verification
Program. This program assists farms and packing houses through
verification of their adherence to FDA's Guide to Minimize
Microbial Food Safety Hazards for Fresh Fruits and Vegetables.
It is a uniform nationwide program that is voluntarily funded
by user fees. Primary users of this program include fresh fruit
and vegetable growers, packers, shippers, and others in the
marketing chain.
Currently audits are performed at 317 farms and facilities
in 32 states and Puerto Rico, with larger numbers of
participants in California, Oregon, Washington, North Carolina,
and New Jersey. Nearly 100 fruit, vegetable and other specialty
crops are covered. AMS staff and AMS licensed and trained state
employees perform the on-site audits.
Another example of an audit-based program offered by AMS is
a Qualified Through Verification, or QTV, program that assists
fresh cut fruit and vegetable processors in managing food
safety risks. There are currently nine fresh cut plants
participating in the QTV program.
QTV is a voluntary, user fee funded program that provides
third party verification of the fresh cut processors adherence
to Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point, HACCP, Plan. Under
the QTV program, processors identify and document critical
points in their production process, measure performance of
their operation at these critical points, and position
themselves to detect and direct any deficiencies that might
emerge.
AMS staff involved in administering this program have
received training in HACCP and audit procedures. Authorized by
the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, marketing
orders and agreements assist farmers by allowing them to
collectively work to solve marketing problems. Industries which
voluntarily enter into these programs in this way choose to
have federal oversight of certain aspects of their operations.
Marketing orders, supported through industry referenda, are
binding on individuals and businesses that are classified as
handlers in the geographic area covered by the order. Marketing
agreements are binding only on handlers who are voluntary
signatories of an agreement. Presently there are 30 active
marketing agreement and order programs covering 25 specialty
crop commodities. Fees are collected from handlers to cover
local costs of administrating these programs.
Under federal marketing orders, USDA considers food safety
to be a quality characteristic of regulated fruit, vegetable,
and specialty crops, and that the absence of harmful pathogens
or toxins is a characteristic of higher quality products.
In response to producer requests for support of their
product quality control efforts, AMS has incorporated food
safety-related requirements in marketing agreements and
marketing order regulations for many years. For example,
testing for aflatoxin has been required for U.S. grown peanuts
since 1965, originally under a Federal marketing agreement and
subsequently through separate legislation administered by AMS.
A large majority of current active Federal marketing order
programs include minimum requirements with most U.S. grade
standards having criteria related to food safety. For example,
lack of mold, insects, foreign material, et cetera. Since 1961,
for example, the marketing order for California prunes has had
inspection and fumigation requirements relative to live insect
infestations. Similar requirements for insects as well as the
presence of dirt or mold have been in place for California
raisins since 1977.
Beginning in 2005, pistachio handlers were required to test
all nuts destined for human consumption for aflatoxin, which at
present, would lower the quality and market value of those
pistachios. Also, for the upcoming 2007/2008 crop, almond
handlers will be required to treat almonds prior to treat
shipment to reduce the chance of salmonella contamination, a
health hazard that can lower the quality and value of almonds
shipped to the market.
Following the September 2006 E.coli outbreak linked to
fresh spinach grown in the Salinas Valley, the California
Department of Food and Agriculture began designing a state
marketing agreement that would require adherence to good
handling practices for most companies involved in shipping
leafy greens in the state. The California Spinach and Leafy
Green Marketing Agreement became effective in February 2007.
AMS has cooperated with CDFA in the verification aspects of
the agreement, including the design and delivery of training
for the California state auditors who will monitor compliance.
To conclude, Mr. Chairman, I would like to reiterate that
food safety policy and the establishment of food safety
standards are not within AMS's mandate. However, AMS does have
significant experience and expertise in the design and delivery
of marketing programs, including those involving inspections
for product quality and verification of production processes.
At industry's request, AMS has incorporated food safety related
elements in several of its marketing programs for the produce
industry. Thank you, and I would be pleased to respond to any
questions.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you, sir. We will now have Mr. Acheson
testify, and then we will have the committee ask you questions.
Thank you. Mr. Acheson.
STATEMENT OF DR. DAVID ACHESON, M.D., F.R.C.P., ASSISTANT
COMMISSIONER FOR FOOD PROTECTION, U.S. FOOD AND DRUG
ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Acheson. Good morning, Chairman Cardoza and members of
the subcommittee. I am Dr. David Acheson, assistant
commissioner for food protection of the Food and Drug
Administration. In this newly created position, Commissioner
Von Eschenbach has asked me to provide advice and counsel on
strategic and substantive food safety and food defense matters
based on my knowledge and experience of the science behind food
protection.
FDA appreciates the opportunity to discuss the recent
outbreaks of foodborne illness associated with fresh produce
and the measures we are taking to enhance the safety of these
products. I am pleased to be joined here today by my colleague,
Mr. Lloyd Day of USDA.
At FDA, ensuring that the products we regulate are safe and
secure is a vital part of our public health mission. The agency
regulates everything Americans eat except for meat, poultry,
and processed egg products, which are regulated by USDA.
FDA is committed to ensuring that America's food supply
continues to be among the safest in the world. In recent years,
we have done a great deal to product the food supply from
contamination, but the recent outbreaks of foodborne illness
associated with fresh produce, peanut butter, and animal feed
underscore the need to develop new, risk-based, farm-to-table
approaches that integrate food safety and defense and focus on
prevention, intervention and response.
These new strategies are necessary to meet the challenges
created by changes in the global food supply, changes in
farming, manufacturing, and processing practices, and changes
in consumer needs. The number of illnesses associated with
fresh produce is a continuing concern of the agency, and we
have worked on a number of initiatives to reduce the presence
of pathogens in these foods.
The fact that produce is often consumed raw or with only
minimal processing without any type of intervention that would
reduce or eliminate pathogens prior to consumption contributes
to its potential as a source of foodborne illness.
Consequently, addressing the way fresh produce is grown,
harvested, and moved from farm to table is crucial to
minimizing the risk of microbial contamination.
FDA has worked with many of our food safety partners to
produce industry guidelines that focus on preventing
contamination. We have also focused our collective efforts on
research to gain a better understanding of the fundamental
reasons by foodborne agents get into fresh produce and to share
our knowledge to date through educational outreach with
affected parties and the public.
With regard to industry guidelines, in March of this year,
FDA issued a draft final version of its guide to minimize
microbial food safety hazards of fresh cut fruits and
vegetables. This guide should help industry reduce the health
hazards that may be introduced or increased during the
production of fresh cut produce.
We have also assisted the industry in developing a number
of other commodity-specific guidelines for the commodities most
often associated with foodborne illness outbreaks. These
include guidelines for lettuce and leafy greens, melons, and
tomatoes. We are working with industry on similar guidelines
for herbs and green onions.
The example of fresh sprouts illustrates how successful
these efforts can be. In 1999, there were 390 reported
illnesses associated with eating contaminated fresh sprouts.
FDA published two guidance documents for sprouts that year. We
believe that the subsequent decline in sprout-associated
illness was in large part due to the industry's adherence to
the FDA recommendations. In 2004, only 33 illnesses were
reported associated with fresh sprouts, and in 2005 and 2006,
there were none.
The recent initiative of the California Department of Food
and Agriculture, the Leafy Green Handler Marketing Agreement,
is another important step toward improving the safety of these
foods. This program verifies and certifies that growers are
adhering to good agricultural practices. We also work closely
with our partners on research to enhance food safety.
For example, for the past decade, FDA has worked closely
with USDA's Agricultural Research Service and Cooperative State
Research, Education, and Extension Service to coordinate and
mutually support our respective research efforts related to
produce safety. We worked together to analyze water samples
from the Salinas watershed for E.coli O157:H7 and to relate the
location of bacteria to geographical, seasonal, or rainfall
variation. An extension of this research will look for sources
of E.coli O157:H7 in California's Salinas Valley. Information
obtained from this study will be used to inform produce growers
about strategies to prevent preharvest microbial contamination.
Educational outreach and the sharing of safety information
with affected parties is another important component of
enhancing the safety of fresh produce. In February, we
participated in a forum sponsored by the Western Institute for
Food Safety and Security to share information regarding the
safety of lettuce and leafy greens on the farm and at packing,
cooling, and processing facilities.
Also in February, the FDA affiliated joint Institute for
Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, and the University of
Florida sponsored a workshop to improve understanding of how
tomatoes become contaminated with salmonella and other
pathogens. Later this month, FDA, the National Center for Food
Safety and Technology, and the University of Georgia's Center
for Food Safety will cosponsor a workshop on microbial testing
to reach a consensus on the role of microbial testing in
ensuring the safety of produce.
In addition, the agency recently held two public hearings
concerning the safety of fresh produce. The purpose of these
hearings was for FDA to share information about recent
outbreaks of foodborne illness related to fresh produce and to
solicit comments, data, and additional scientific information
on this issue. The administrative record tied to these hearings
will remain open until June 13, 2007.
In summary, FDA continues to work with federal, state, and
international food safety partners and with industry to address
fresh produce and broader food safety food defense challenges
in our nation's food supply. As we move forward, we are
focusing our attention on three key areas: preventing
contamination through a strong science base, risk-based
preventative controls, and leveraging with key partners;
improving intervention methods by using modern technology to
establish a comprehensive integrated food information system to
analyze information and detect potential contamination; and by
enhancing our rapid response capabilities by, for example,
improving product tracking. Thank you for the opportunity to
discuss FDA's ongoing efforts to improve the safety of fresh
produce. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you, Dr. Acheson. My first question goes
to Mr. Day. In your testimony, sir, you testified that AMS
cooperative programs are funded by producers and packing houses
through user fee collections. Please tell the subcommittee how
much is contributed by the industry for these purposes and can
you provide briefly program-by-program detail for the record of
this hearing?
Mr. Day. I would be happy to provide more detail for the
record. The audits cost essentially $75 an hour, and an audit
of a packinghouse or something like that would take about 8
hours. So that is about $600 for an audit. As to the total
number, the value for all the audits we perform, we did 352
last year, so you would probably multiply that times $600, and
that would be the total contribution that goes to not just AMS
but also to the states that do a lot of the auditing.
Mr. Cardoza. How many packinghouses and shippers are there
in the country that you should be inspecting?
Mr. Day. I don't have the actual number of all those, but
we are doing over 300 right now.
Mr. Cardoza. Okay, sir, if you could get that for us
because I think that speaks to also the issue of how many are
being certified, how often that needs to be done, that would be
helpful.
Mr. Day. All right, we would be happy to provide that to
you.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you. Sir, in my opening statement, I
mentioned that I believe that there should be 1 regulatory
agency that is responsible for all food safety questions so
that there is accountability. I don't necessarily think that
just shifting bureaucracies is always the answer. Certainly the
Homeland Security Department has sort of proven that philosophy
not to be necessarily the best situation.
But I would like to ask you very pointedly if you think
that USDA would be a better agency to address this question of
produce food safety.
Mr. Day. Well, we believe that the existing food safety
system is working, that the American food supply continues to
be among the safest in the world. Since AMS is a marketing
agency and we just provide assistance to potential quality
attributes related to food safety, I don't think it would be in
my purview to opine as to whether AMS or USDA versus FDA would
be the appropriate agency. So I will decline to comment on
that, sir.
Mr. Cardoza. Dr. Acheson, has FDA taken any actions
requiring fruit and vegetable producers and processors to have
written plans about contamination risks and how to address
them?
Mr. Acheson. With regard to written plans, in terms of
processes, yes, there is a requirement for good manufacturing
practices at the processing level. That requires the
maintenance of certain records around sanitation issues. When
you get down to producers at the farm level, the answer is no.
Mr. Cardoza. Okay, where did the contamination take place
in some of the most recent outbreaks?
Mr. Acheson. You mean in the spinach outbreak?
Mr. Cardoza. Yes.
Mr. Acheson. Most likely the site of contamination was at
the farm level and----
Mr. Cardoza. Okay, so basically what you just told me is
that you have got some regulatory measures in place, but at the
level the contamination took place, there is no requirement of
any plan?
Mr. Acheson. That is correct.
Mr. Cardoza. Was the contamination of the spinach due to
systemic fluid uptake through the roots of the plant, or was it
surface contamination on the surface of the plant through
irrigation water splashing up or contaminants on the outside
that weren't controlled by the washing? And if it was the
latter, did the packaging of these products contribute to how
virulently the pathogen contaminated humans?
Mr. Acheson. In truth, we don't know exactly how the
spinach became contaminated. The ideas that you just mentioned
are all plausible hypotheses. That it came in through the root
system, that is certainly potentially possible. Frankly, I
think it is more likely that it was external contamination.
Once E.coli O157 sticks to a leaf of a piece of spinach, it
sticks on very tightly, and it is hard to get it off. So
precisely how that spinach became contaminated, we don't know
in that context. It could have been through water. It could
have been through wild animals. It could have been from birds.
It could have been a variety of possible sources.
Once that product is contaminated at the farm level, then
clearly what has to be done is to prevent further contamination
of other product. Proper processing of the spinach, proper
washing with appropriate chlorine levels, et cetera, will
minimize the likelihood of spread. It will not necessarily kill
E.coli that are already on that spinach. But clearly processors
have a responsibility to make sure that, if there is a problem,
it doesn't spread to other spinach that is not contaminated to
begin with.
Mr. Cardoza. It seems to me, sir, that we need to find out
these answers, that we need to know what is causing what some
believe is increased outbreaks. I don't know that there is
increased, or just that we are finding more of them. But what
it speaks to me is that there is a lack of research dollars
being put into this area. That is really the federal
government's role in my mind is to make sure that we provide
safety, that we provide security, and we find out what the
causes are. That has traditionally been the federal
government's role in research.
Has your administration put forward an increased research
budget for this area?
Mr. Acheson. First of all, I couldn't agree with you more.
A fundamentally sound scientific infrastructure to make food
safety decisions is critical. You cannot make good decisions if
you don't have sound science and sound scientific
infrastructure to do that. To get that, you need the
appropriate resources, and you need the research to get the job
done.
FDA is not a research agency. We are a regulatory agency.
What we do with regard to research is work with our research
colleagues, especially in the department of agriculture,
agricultural research services, as well as CSREES in terms of
working with them and looking at the critical areas, what needs
to get done, what are the critical answers. So that is how we
do that. We are essentially sharing our knowledge, sharing our
concerns with the research agencies who can actually get the
job done.
Mr. Cardoza. Sir, I agree with what you just said, other
than the part where I need to know whether your administration
has asked for an increase in the research budget to get to the
bottom of these problems.
Mr. Acheson. I believe in the current FY '08 request there
is an increase in research, specifically yes.
Mr. Cardoza. Okay, one last question. There is going to be
testimony here later on today by another witness that says that
the number of inspections has actually decreased dramatically
in the last 3 years. Is that true?
Mr. Acheson. Yes, but I think one has to look at how
inspection is done. I mean this obviously has been a focus with
regard to imports, and what the agency is doing is using a
risk-based strategy. Simply inspecting more foods just because
they are there is not the answer to the problem. It has to be
risk-based, targeted inspections. But that alone isn't going to
solve the problem. What we are trying to do, and part of my new
role in this new position is to create this strategic thinking,
is to move back, which gets at some of your earlier comments,
focus on the preventative strategies. We don't want to inspect
our way out of this problem. We want to prevent it, and you
have got to have the scientific infrastructure to do that.
Mr. Cardoza. I would suggest to you, sir, that we need
both.
Mr. Acheson. I couldn't agree more, but if you prevent it,
intervene, and then have a robust response system, that is the
best that you can do to prevent it ever getting on the dinner
plate. And if it does, to respond quickly.
Mr. Cardoza. I have so many more questions, but I am going
to turn it over to my colleagues because I know they have
excellent questions as well. Mr. Neugebauer.
Mr. Neugebauer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Day, in the
last 9 months, have you seen an increase in the amount of
verification in audit requests that you have had from your
agency?
Mr. Day. Yes, Congressman Neugebauer. In fact if you look
at '06 inspections versus '07 inspections, we have seen an
increase of about 108 percent, so certainly there is a growing
demand for these kind of services by the industry. And much of
that is demanded by their customers down the marketing chain.
Mr. Neugebauer. Well, I think that was my question is I
would suspect that people that are marketing the fruits and
vegetables are probably very anxious to have that certification
to give them some insurance that, in fact, that their products
are going to be safe.
Mr. Day. Yes, you are exactly right, sir. There is
certainly a trend by those that are purchasing the product to
have this kind of good agricultural practices or good handling
practices seal of certification to add value, to add some sense
of safety to the product as they receive it.
Mr. Neugebauer. What percentage of the end user, the people
that are marketing fruits and vegetables, what percentage of
those folks do you think are requiring some kind of a
certification in audit process? In other words, how strong is
the market demand for that?
Mr. Day. Yes, I don't have an actual number on that. We can
try and find that number and send it to you, but it is
certainly growing. Major retailers as well as restaurants are
looking for more and more food safety assurances, especially
given the recent outbreaks. And I think as the chairman
mentioned, whether there are an increase in outbreaks or
whether we are just noticing more outbreaks because of improved
communication and technologies is a very fundamental question
to this whole debate.
Mr. Neugebauer. Maybe this is a question for Dr. Acheson,
but are there disclosures to the end users on best practices of
washing fruits and vegetables before consumption? I mean within
the restaurants, within the packaging of the end user. Because
I know that my grandmother used to wash vegetables until you
couldn't tell what they actually were when she got through with
them for the very reason she was concerned about that. But what
kind of responsibility does the end user or the consumers have
as far as taking some due diligence there? Dr. Acheson.
Mr. Acheson. Sure. Consumers do have a responsibility, as
does everybody who handles food, whether it is from the grower,
the processor, the packer, the distributor, the retailer, all
the way down to the consumer. Once the consumer gets a hold of
that and it is the kitchen, they have responsibilities. And we
have had and continue to have extensive educational programs
about food safety in general, cooking, chilling, cleaning,
separating in that context. We have specific consumer
information on what to do with leafy greens and how to wash
them and fruits and vegetables. And that is an important part
of the consumer message, and as we were dealing with spinach on
an ongoing basis, those consumer messages were constantly being
repeated in terms of what consumers can do to help ensure the
safety in their own homes.
Mr. Neugebauer. I notice that FDA has issued guidance
documents to producers in industry to help them understand good
agricultural practices or GAPs as I believe they are referred
to. Are those generic, or are they commodity specific? In other
words, do you have different guidelines for tomatoes, lettuce,
spinach, fresh fruit, or are these general or specific?
Mr. Acheson. We have both. The original good agricultural
practices document that was issued in 1998 was broad and
focused on good agricultural practices pretty much across the
board. Since then, we have issued a number of product-specific
guidelines. Melons, sprouts, fresh cut produce is the most
recent one, and we are working on others as I mentioned in my
oral testimony on herbs and other things. So we have the broad
approach and then the more focused one.
Mr. Neugebauer. Just in my final time here, if I could get
each one of you to respond to this. How are the two of you
working together? Explain to me interaction that your two
agencies would have when it comes to the food safety for fruits
and vegetables. I will start with Mr. Day.
Mr. Day. Sure. We have an ongoing consultative relationship
with FDA for its voluntary GAP and good handling practices and
other audit-based programs. What happens is when they would
change their guidelines, they would notify us. We would change
how we actually go out and audit a program to be based on those
specific guidelines for whether it is tomatoes or cantaloupes
or leafy greens. And as we are out in plants, we have a
memorandum of understanding. So that if we notice something
that might be some kind of an egregious food safety problem, we
would certainly notify FDA and FDA notifies us in the kind of
things that might be related to the marketing issues that we
need to be cognizant of.
Mr. Neugebauer. Dr. Acheson.
Mr. Acheson. I think my colleague here has summarized it
well. We have a very good working relationship. When we develop
a new scientific approach, we make sure we share it with the
people who are interacting on a more ongoing basis. AMS has a
great capability of actually getting boots on the ground in
some of these places. It is more eyes. It is more ears,
educating and looking for problems. To give you a specific
example of the interaction, since food defense came on the
scene, we work closely with AMS, and we had individuals over on
detail at FDA to understand the nuances of the importance of
food defense and how to put it into context for industry as a
whole, not just produce, but it applies to produce.
So there is a very good working relationship, and I think
the two of us essentially form part of this integrated team,
which is what makes the food safety system what it is right
now.
Mr. Neugebauer. Mr. Chairman, I believe I have
overextended. Thank you for your indulgence.
Mr. Cardoza. I thank you for excellent questions, Mr.
Neugebauer. The chair would like to remind members that they
will be recognized for questioning in order of seniority for
members who were here at the start of the hearing. After that,
members will be recognized in order of arrival, and I
appreciate members understanding. I would now like to recognize
the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Etheridge.
Mr. Etheridge. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me thank you
for holding this hearing. I note with regret though the failure
of FDA to provide witness testimony in a timely manner, and I
hope that will not be the case in the future because it helps
us do a better job of being prepared.
As I mentioned in the full committee hearing on food safety
that we held last week, our food supply here in the United
States has always been referred to as the safest and most
abundant in the world, and I hope we are able to keep saying
that. But the outbreak that we have had in the last year of
spinach in California, the problem with lettuce at Taco Bell,
and now tainted pet food, and we find that some of it has
gotten into the food chain of some of the chicken and pork. I
just want to stress that we have got to get our hands around
this whole issue so that consumers will not be suspicious of
the food they are feeding their children.
And my home state of North Carolina is a major producer of
fruits and vegetables for the east coast. And if we want to
make sure the industry continues to grow and increase exports,
it is critical that we get this done and don't have other
outbreaks.
Nobody remembers how many good meals they get, but I
guarantee you they are going to remember the bad ones. So Mr.
Day, you mentioned several programs that AMS has implemented to
ensure food and vegetable safety. Did you say that AMS
agreement with California Department of Food and Agriculture to
address the spinach issue was voluntary?
Mr. Day. Yes, sir.
Mr. Etheridge. Well, aren't some of the programs, such as
those monitoring aflatoxin in peanuts and salmonella in almonds
mandatory?
Mr. Day. Yes.
Mr. Etheridge. Why are some of these problems voluntary?
Mr. Day. Well----
Mr. Etheridge. Some are not. Doesn't this compromise the
entire system?
Mr. Day. Well, some are voluntary because they are part of
the marketing agreement in which the handlers and producers
voluntarily become part of that. A marketing order, on the
other hand, is mandatory, and there is a referenda every 5
years so that the peanut growers, for instance, or the almond
growers, they vote to be a part of this order. And once a
change or some kind of a regulation is----
Mr. Etheridge. I appreciate that, but doesn't it compromise
the system?
Mr. Day. Well, I don't think it compromises the system. I
think it is just different systems.
Mr. Etheridge. Okay, next question. Does USDA have an
estimate as to the impact that last year's contaminated spinach
or lettuce had on U.S. exports, and, for that matter, domestic
costs?
Mr. Day. On U.S. exports, I don't think it was tremendous,
but I did hear a number that it cost the industry perhaps $100
million. I think most of that was geared toward domestic
consumption decline.
Mr. Etheridge. $100 million?
Mr. Day. I heard that, but I don't know that is the
accurate value.
Mr. Etheridge. Okay, let me ask a question as it relates to
FDA. What is the FDA doing to increase trace-back technology to
hopefully limit the extent of the damage when inevitable
breakdowns occur?
Mr. Acheson. First of all, may I just apologize that you
didn't get the paperwork in a timely manner. We will try to
make sure that doesn't happen.
Mr. Etheridge. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Acheson. Improving trace-back is all part and parcel of
where we need to be moving with this strategic plan around
protecting the food supply. The trace-back piece, the response
piece is when things have failed and people or pets have
started to get sick, what can we do to get onto it. You asked
specifically about what we are doing to develop that. At this
point, we are simply trying to make sure that our current
systems are robust enough to handle data when it comes in a
timely way.
But I think this needs to be looked at in a more radical
way. We talked about basic science around preventing the bugs
getting there in the first place. I believe we need
technological infrastructure to better be able to handle data
to get faster tracking in such a way----
Mr. Etheridge. Have you requesting funding for that, or do
you need funding to make sure that happens?
Mr. Acheson. Part of the strategic thinking that I am
working on is looking at this big picture and whether that is--
how that would fit into it. But there is a need to go down that
road, but we are not at that point yet.
Mr. Etheridge. Do you have funds in this year's budget for
that?
Mr. Acheson. That is not currently in there yet.
Mr. Etheridge. Will you request that before this year is
out so we can get it in the budget?
Mr. Acheson. I don't exactly know where that is going to
go, and part of my role is to develop this plan as quickly as
possible. And if we can do it to get it in this year, then that
would be the goal.
Mr. Etheridge. We look forward to having that. Let me go
back to one final question, Mr. Chairman, because you mentioned
earlier that the number of inspections had dropped. You did not
answer why. So I would like to know why they dropped.
Mr. Acheson. I beg your pardon. Could you repeat that?
Mr. Etheridge. In the previous testimony with the chairman,
you said the number of inspections had dropped, and I wanted to
follow up as to why they dropped.
Mr. Acheson. What we are having to do at FDA is to allocate
the resources that we have in the areas of maximum risk. In the
context of inspections, we have shifted things around a little
bit. Some things have been inspected slightly more frequently,
particularly certain aspects of imports, others less. Overall,
as the resources have had to be moved around, the total number
of inspections have dropped. I mean that is just the way it is.
Mr. Etheridge. I will close with this. It seems to me if
numbers have dropped and the problems have increased and we are
reallocating resources, we may need to reallocate resources
again to get more inspection because it seems to me to give the
confidence to the American consumer when we are importing more
foods, we got a real problem if we aren't inspecting. I would
ask you to take a look at that because I think that is a
critical issue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you, Mr. Etheridge. I appreciate your
questions. Now, I would like to turn it over to 5 minutes of
questioning by Mr. Conaway.
Mr. Conaway. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Acheson, you
talked about a risk-based model that, I assume, focuses our
attention on the areas of greatest risk. As the food moves from
the producer to the table, can you talk to us about how you are
evaluating this and what this risk-based model is and how you
evaluate the various stages and what your plans are to address
those risks in this model?
Mr. Acheson. With regard to risk, you have got to look at
it very broadly, and it has got to be farm-to-table continuum,
and it has got to look at domestic as well as imported. But to
take your specific example, let us take, since we have been
talking about spinach, the risk to spinach. Clearly when you
are looking at the history of spinach that is starting out in
an open field, what are the risks associated with the
contamination there, and how do you prevent them?
Once it is then in a processing facility, what are the
risks associated with that in terms of how it is washed, how it
is handled? Clearly that is not an environment where fresh
contamination is likely from an external source. It is not
impossible, but it is not as likely as a field. The greater
risk is through spreading.
Then as you are moving down beyond the processing, let us
say it is in a bag. It is prewashed. There are issues with
distribution and retail in terms of refrigeration. If those
products are not adequately refrigerated, if there are low
levels of E.coli on there, they could potentially grow. So
there is a risk in that context.
When you move it into the consumer environment, clearly the
need to keep it refrigerated, there is also a risk. And then
there is actually a risk of cross-contamination in a consumer
environment or restaurant environment from, example, say raw
meat would spread the juices onto the leafy greens. So there
are different degrees of risk at different points in that
chain.
And the inspection, the testing resources and the
preventative strategies need to be tailored based on where that
risk is because the controls and the risks on the farm are very
different than the controls and risks as you move further down
that chain. So it is clearly complex, and it is multifaceted.
And you need to be looking at the whole piece.
Mr. Conaway. Right, and so do we have that in place?
Mr. Acheson. Beg pardon? Do we have what?
Mr. Conaway. Do you have that model in place?
Mr. Acheson. We do not have that model in place yet, but
that is part of----
Mr. Conaway. And the timeframe for implementing the model,
or obviously it is not going to be same model for everything we
eat, but where are you in your work?
Mr. Acheson. These broad preventative strategies focused on
risk and intervention are exactly what I am working on now in
my new position. It is going to take a little while before we
get all this figured out because it is complicated. As to how
long? I don't know exactly how long, but I can tell you it is a
top priority for us to get something put in place as quickly as
possible.
Mr. Conaway. All right. Mr. Day, you talked about the
cooperation between California and USDA and what appears to be
good work to the California legislature has done with respect
to, I guess, lettuce and green leafy stuff. Do the states work
well together across state lines? In other words, are the
agriculture group in Texas adopting the same kind of a model
that California has done? Can you talk to us a little bit about
the----
Mr. Day. Sure.
Mr. Conaway. --cross-state cooperation?
Mr. Day. Actually, commodity groups and major purchasers
across the country are developing specific food safety programs
or contract requirements related to good agricultural practices
and good handling practices. Several initiatives, to just list
them out of you, include California Cantaloupe, California
Leafy Greens, Florida Tomatoes, California Strawberries,
California Citrus Research Board, The Georgia Fruit and
Vegetable Growers Association, the American Mushroom Institute,
the National Watermelon Association, and some of the potato
growers up in the Pacific Northwest. So there is a wide variety
of groups that are looking at developing new product safety
standards, most of them based on the FDA guidelines and then
finding ways that they can audit toward those to ensure the
customers down the marketing chain that they have improved and
they have the latest good agricultural practices in place.
Mr. Conaway. So, in your view, do states look at each
other's best models? Do the best models actually percolate
across states, or is it that the commodity groups are doing it,
and it spreads that way.
Mr. Day. Yeah, there is a lot of collaboration among the
state departments of agriculture on this very issue right now.
Mr. Conaway. The $100 million that you say the spinach
lost, is that spread across the whole----
Mr. Day. The whole country.
Mr. Conaway. No, I know. But the losers in that $100
million were all the way from the producers to the folks that
got sick. I mean is that----
Mr. Day. Right, from the producers----
Mr. Conaway. So everybody along the chain had some pain in
that system----
Mr. Day. Right.
Mr. Conaway. --in order to try to motivate them to fix
whatever needs to be fixed?
Mr. Day. Precisely.
Mr. Conaway. All right, thank you. Yield back.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank the gentleman from Texas. I am going to
now proceed to call up the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Davis,
for questioning, but before I do that, I would like to request
for the gentleman an opportunity to yield back to me for just a
moment for a question for Acheson.
Mr. Davis. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I yield as much time that
you have allotted me that you may consume.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you, and we will let you go a little bit
more in a just a minute. But Dr Acheson, I know you have only
been on your position for a short time, and I really don't want
to beat you up that it always seems like the guy that comes in
to fix the problems are the ones that we end up asking the
tough questions to rather than the people that were in place
before they got there. So I apologize for this.
But earlier in your testimony, you told me that FDA does
not support research and doesn't do research in these areas.
And in fact, that is wrong. You have research centers in
Mississippi, Illinois, and Maryland currently, nothing in the
west coast or the western part of the United States. And there
have been a number of folks, universities, working with FDA to
locate FDA scientists in the West where the vast majority of
fruits and vegetables in this country are grown; although, they
are grown all over the country, as Mr. Etheridge mentioned
earlier. In fact, the folks who, through the miracle of
technology, have informed me of this fact, said that they have
been working with FDA for some time getting a lot of
encouragement at the lower levels but that the brass at the top
has not been nearly as forthcoming with the desire to locate
research on the west coast.
So I am going to allow you to speak to that, but I just
wanted to correct that inaccuracy that was in the record.
Mr. Acheson. Well, thank you for your correction. Maybe I
misspoke slightly, but I think what I said was that FDA is not
a regulatory agency--a research agency, I am sorry. FDA is not
a research agency. That doesn't mean that the agency doesn't do
some level of research. We have research labs in our offices at
College Park. And, as you pointed out, we do research in
various other places. What I did not want to leave you with the
impression with was that FDA has the current structure and
resources to be able to drive the research program that is
needed with regard to solving the problems in fresh produce and
other food safety areas.
Yes, we do some research, but it is not at a level of a
research agency. In terms of----
Mr. Cardoza. Just a second, Mr. Acheson. That is exactly my
point. What you just said was the reason why I asked the
question was that we don't have the structure currently----
Mr. Acheson. Yes.
Mr. Cardoza. --to do the research that is necessary. And
your administration hasn't asked for it.
Mr. Acheson. I would agree that we don't have the required
structure, and that is part of what I am trying to build here
is what is the research structure going to look like. And it is
going to take resources and energy to make that happen.
Mr. Cardoza. I couldn't agree more. Mr. Davis, I am going
to turn it back over to you and ask this clerk to reset the
clock for Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, and the
ranking members for holding this hearing today. And I also want
to thank the witnesses who are here testifying today. It has
been often said that the number one priority for those who
serve in government is to be sure that Americans are protected.
This not only extends to fighting terrorism in Homeland
Security or making sure we have plenty law enforcement
officials on the street.
Food safety is also an important issue, one that relates to
our protection from tainted or unhealthy food. One of the major
reasons American agriculture products are the best in the world
is that they are also the safest. American consumers have a
great deal of confidence in the safety of our food. The
repercussions of this confidence eroding would be unbelievably
immense both in our domestic markets and our ability to sell
our agricultural products abroad.
At the end of the day, no one benefits from consumers
thinking that America's food supply is not safe. All the work
that we have done with consumer marketing, with FDA and USDA
has been to be sure that the consumer is protected, and we do
that through being sure that the packers and the canners and
the processors, not the ones who produce it but the ones who
prepare in many cases what has been produced by the farmer and
between that farmer and the consumer, to be sure that chain
that ties the fields to the table will be safe.
It is not our job to protect the profits of the processors.
It is our responsibility to protect the consuming public in
America. And as a result of that, we see more and more
agriculture products, consumable items, being imported into our
country from other parts of the world. Could you give me a
rough idea of about how much you think, what percentage of our
food is imported from countries outside the U.S. that would be
imported from either our continent or from Europe or from Asia
or other parts of the world, compared with the food that we
consume, in other words, what we produce and what we consume?
Could you give me a rough estimate? Do you understand the
question?
Mr. Acheson. I do, yes. I can certainly get you a more
accurate number, but I believe it is in the order of 15 percent
the food that we consume is imported. It varies by commodity of
food though.
Mr. Davis. So you are saying 15 percent of the fruits and
vegetables, canned items that would be canned, processed, or
prepared in other parts of the world, that may be imported in
the country as well as--are you saying only 15 percent is what
we import?
Mr. Acheson. I am saying on average total is 15 percent.
Seafood, for example, is much higher. It is of the order of 70
percent. Fresh produce will vary, depending on the commodity
and depending on the time of year. If you want a specific
breakdown of which foods, which percentage, I could provide
that for you. But the 15 percent is across the board on
average.
Mr. Davis. If you could find an accurate percentage wise, I
would love for you to send that to my office. Second question
is this. Obviously in our country, we have done a pretty good
job of inspecting, being sure that the foods we consume are
healthy, protect us. We even list the nutrition of those on the
label of what we consume, but we have no ability to be able to
regulate any products, except through trade, I guess, that is
imported into this country. And to me, I think that is an area
we may be letting down just a little bit. What percentages of
inspections on imported products of the workforce that we have,
what percent of our workforce is put into inspecting imported
products compared to those produced and processed here in
America?
Mr. Acheson. I can get--I have some colleagues with me who
could probably provide you a more specific answer, but I
believe it is approximately 50 percent, 50/50.
Mr. Davis. It is 50/50 for the imported products compared
to 50 percent of what we actually produce here in America?
Mr. Acheson. It is of that order, and again I can provide
you with a specific breakdown, but I would just say--can I--
will you allow me to just sort of----
Mr. Davis. Yes.
Mr. Acheson. --follow up a little bit? Certainly your
question was suggesting that we have absolutely no control over
the safety of foods that come from other countries, and I think
that is a little bit of an overstatement in terms of the risks.
We do. I mean that is what the inspectors are doing at the
ports. If we find a problem, we can put out an import alert.
That is what we have done with the rice protein concentrates
and an example in the produce context would be cantaloupes that
we imported where we had problems with salmonella. And we put
an import alert out there to prevent the importation of
potentially contaminated cantaloupes. So I want to, just for
the record, point out that we do a lot to protect.
Mr. Davis. There was obviously a huge failure back a few
weeks ago when some products came into America that was tainted
that we were not able to locate. So the point I am making is
that in the--when it is processed in a foreign country and then
shipped in this country, do we have inspectors that are
inspecting the food that is going to be coming into America?
Mr. Acheson. We do not have inspectors on a regular basis
going to foreign manufacturers. If there is a problem and there
is a need to get an inspector out there to look at the problem,
we do and we have.
Mr. Davis. In the area I am from, we have a lot of broiler
processing, meat packing, not as much--very few in the area
that I am from, but there is a certainly on-the-spot inspectors
in virtually every processing plant that we have in this
country. That was the point I was making to say here, we are
there looking at what is being processed. In other countries,
we are not, and I think that is an area where we may be
failing. Thank you.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Davis,
for your questions. We are now going to turn it over to my
friend and colleague from California, Mr. McCarthy.
Mr. McCarthy. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
you having this hearing. I know the work you have done in this
area. I had a line of questions, but I just am going to follow
up really in what the chairman was asking earlier. First to
Administrator Day. You said you have done 300 of those
inspections, but you couldn't give a number of how many total
plants there were. Would you consider that to be--could you
give me a percentage of the 300, how many overall? Would it be
10 percent with inspections? I mean how comfortable do you feel
with that number?
Mr. Day. Well, I can get you a total number. I don't know
that it is even as high as 10 percent. We do inspect for
anything that we are purchasing into the national school lunch
program. All of those facilities are inspected, and they are
going to be mandated to have GAPs and GHPs and all of that. And
so that number is certainly growing, whether it is on the beef
side or on the fruit and vegetable side. But I will have to
submit for the record the actual percentage because I don't
know that off the top of my head.
Mr. McCarthy. Okay, and Doctor, if I could follow up. The
chairman asked about how the E.coli outbreak occurred from the
standpoint of how it came. And you said the answer from the
standpoint--and I got--I guess I refer to the FDA and
California Department of Health Services on March 23, their
final report. They were unable to definitely determine how the
bacteria spread onto the spinach. Were you able to eliminate
any of the concerns or ways that it may have been spread on
either of them?
Mr. Acheson. No. As you point out, that report indicates a
number of potential ways that it could have spread onto the
spinach. We weren't there at the time. Obviously we were going
in after the fact, and exactly how, you can't say one way or
the other.
Mr. McCarthy. So to me, this is the fundamental question as
we move forward. One, how did it occur? And are there any ways
that we find out that it didn't? What is the plan, or do you
have one, to actually get to that answer?
Mr. Acheson. There is a lot of research already going on
with, as has been mentioned, the Western Institute, with the
state of California as part of that, with the other research
organizations to get at some of these fundamental questions.
Mr. McCarthy. Do you think we will be able to answer that
question?
Mr. Acheson. We have to. I mean it may not be in the short
term, but we have got to set up the fundamental systems to get
at how do these bugs get into food in the first place. Because
only by understanding that, what I would term microbial
ecology, where are these bacteria living, how are they moving
around, how are they getting from wild animals onto produce,
from water onto produce, and what are the controls to prevent
it? Can you ever hope to have a sophisticated preventative
strategy that is going to work.
Mr. McCarthy. I agree with you because that is the
fundamental answer we need before we move forward on how to
cure this. I mean what I see in California--I just came from
the legislature there--and everybody is producing legislation
without really knowing it is going to answer the problem and
how do we get the trust of the people.
Mr. Acheson. Exactly right.
Mr. McCarthy. So from my question and your answer that is
there, and prior with the chairman when it comes to research,
what has been requested in the budget that can get you that
answer and get the American people that answer? Earlier you
requested it is not fundamental research, your agency. The
chairman came back with all these different areas of where we
do research. Knowing a lot of this had happened in California,
coming from the area of UC Davis and others, have we requested
the ability for the research and the technology, especially
going forward, to answer the question?
Mr. Acheson. Can I get back to you on the specific amount
that we have requested for FY '08 for research because I----
Mr. McCarthy. You can get back to me, but do you have a
plan that is going to answer it?
Mr. Acheson. I will have. Part of my mission in this job is
to put food safety defense number 1, and come up with a
strategic approach that is going to prevent if possible,
intervene if necessary, and inspect to ensure prevention is
working, and then respond. And frankly, I am not there yet with
that plan. And, as I think I have said, building that research
infrastructure, understanding those fundamental mechanisms of
how bacteria are moving around, it is key to all of this. And
it has got to be built into how do you make this work. We need
to get away from reaction and focus on prevention.
Mr. McCarthy. I agree with you there, and I guess I want to
help you help us from the standpoint----
Mr. Acheson. Right.
Mr. McCarthy. --the Farm Bill is coming up, and we have a
short window of opportunity here. And I think we can miss an
opportunity of safety for America. If I could request of you to
work with the subcommittee that we could come up with that plan
because I think the American people ask that we answer that
fundamental question of safety. And I think it all hinges in
this whole hearing based upon did we answer how it got there.
And if we can't answer that fundamental question, we really
can't move forward.
So if there is an ability that we all agree that it needs
greater research and a plan to answer the fundamental question,
I would like to be able to do that. And I would tell you that
this committee is more than willing to work with you. And I
know you have a big job, and you are just getting on the job.
But if we could speed that up in a manner and bring people
together, especially, in the long run we need to focus on the
research. And knowing how large California is and how many
producers in the West, if we could move there, I know the
chairman would be very helpful. I yield back my time.
Mr. Cardoza. I would like to thank the gentleman from
California for both his questioning and his expertise in this
issue. It is certainly something that concerns us in our home
state, and we are going to have to get to the bottom of it, as
you said. I am going to be turning it over to the gentleman
from Georgia in just a moment. But I want to announce to the
audience and to the members that I have got to present a bill
on the floor in just a moment. I will be doing that. I will be
turning it over, when he returns, to Mr. Etheridge to conduct
the hearing, and then I will be returning as soon as the bill
has been presented. Gentleman from Georgia.
Mr. Barrow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, my areas of
concern are probably going to be pitched more to Dr. Acheson
than to Mr. Day, but I have some observations I would like Mr.
Day to chime in on. But at the outset, Mr. Day, you referred in
passing to the Georgia Fruits and Vegetables Association. Well,
I have talked with those folks, and the context for my comments
is going to be this background here.
You know in my part of the country we probably have the
most diverse agricultural portfolio of any place in the
country. We may not produce as much of most things as they
produce in some bigger states, but we produce as great a
variety of anything as you can find anywhere in my part of the
country. And the folks in my part of the country are under
intense pressure from foreign imports, and one of the areas of
concern they bring up with me is to make sure that we are
trading and producing on a level playing field. So I want to
follow on some of the questions that were suggested by the
thorough cross examination of the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr.
Davis, and just make a couple of observations as I focus in on
this problem.
Actually you may have been correct in pointing out that
what we are consuming from imports may be only 15 percent of
what we are consuming. But at the hearing of the subcommittee
on specialty crops just last week, we established that insofar
as the balance of trade in food is concerned we have become a
net importer for the first time in this last year. And that 15
percent you are talking about 50/50 in terms of how much we are
exporting as opposed to how much we are importing.
So of that 15 percent that is the trend that we are
confronting. If you want to know where you are, you want to
know where you are moving. You want to know where you have been
and where things are moving. And we are moving toward importing
more and more of our food. Now, I want to compare and contrast
what I hear you saying we are doing in your area of
responsibility with what I understand to be the case with
respect to the USDA when it comes to meat inspection.
When it comes to meat inspection, we have a proactive
policy of protecting the American consumer by sending
inspectors abroad to every processing plant that has any
significant business with this country. We check it out before
it gets on the boat, before it gets on the plane. We are
inspecting to make sure that the processing facilities are up
to our standards before it gets to the American marketplace.
You compare and contrast that with what you describe we are
doing with respect to the now majority of trade in produce
where our policy is largely reactive. We are standing on the
shore, and if we notice something dirty, either when it arrives
on our shore or after the test population shows that there is
something dirty in the stream of commerce, then we put out
market alerts. Then we run the stuff down. We have a proactive
policy versus an essentially reactive policy with respect to a
share of our ag consumption that is growing every year, and
that concerns me.
With my part of the country with folks who are involved in
the production of fruits and vegetables, we are highly
regulated in a manner that we have accepted as the cost of
doing business in this country. We regulate at the growing
state, at the processing, with the chemicals and the pesticides
that are applied, when it comes to harvesting, when it comes to
processing. We make sure that the stuff is good enough for our
marketplace so the net effect of this is we are doing a better
job of protecting the foreign consumers of American produce
then we are protecting American consumers of foreign produce.
And that ain't cutting it. I don't think that is going to work
for us.
So what I want you to do is to tell me if I am off base on
that, and then I want Mr. Day to chime in and say whether he
thinks the time has come for your agency to start doing more of
what his agency is doing. For us to get off of a reactive
approach toward this and start becoming more proactive and
policing the production side of things before it enters the
stream of commerce.
Now, I will let it go and let you guys have at it.
Mr. Acheson. Thank you. First of all, let me say in support
of what I said earlier, I completely agree with you. Reacting
to a problem is not the way to deal with this.
Mr. Barrow. Then what are we doing to change our policy
from reaction to proaction?
Mr. Acheson. We are developing a strategy to try to do
exactly that.
Mr. Barrow. When are we going to have a strategy and who is
doing the developing?
Mr. Acheson. I am. That is my responsibility.
Mr. Barrow. When are we going to have something to look at?
Mr. Acheson. As quickly as I can get it.
Mr. Barrow. Any--bigger than a breadbox and smaller than
the Empire State Building?
Mr. Acheson. We will see. I mean you have raised a lot of
important questions.
Mr. Barrow. Well, I represent producers who are not playing
on a level playing field and consumers who aren't getting
protected from the stuff that is coming into our market.
Mr. Acheson. Food safety is our mission at FDA. That is
what we are all about. I mean you mentioned a lot of trade
issues, but we are a public health agency. And our focus is on
making sure that when consumers put food in their mouth,
whether it is grown in your state or in a foreign country, it
is safe. That is the key criteria. What do we need to get
there, and what we need is preventative proactive approach. I
agree with you. It is not there yet.
Mr. Barrow. On the domestic front, that is our policy. We
are doing it indirectly by regulating virtually every aspect of
production. Mr. Day, do you have any insight as to whether or
not I am barking up the right tree on this? Should we become
more proactive with respect to the inspection on the foreign
side of the ocean with respect to imports that are heading our
way?
Mr. Day. Well, I think you raised some very important
points, Congressman. On the food safety inspection service
side, which, you know, regulates meat and eggs, you are
absolutely correct. They go out. Their international services
division goes out to every country that is exporting beef to
this country, and they inspect to the standards established by
FSIS as HACCP standards.
And so the rest of the world knows exactly what they have
to adhere to, and they go out, and they inspect--they don't
inspect every single plant. I think eventually they do, but
they inspect a sampling of enough plants to give confidence in
that system so that we can have that bilateral confidence in
the system.
On the fruit and vegetable side, it is a little more
difficult. I think what industry is looking for is a federal
solution that requires good ag practices, good handling
practices that would cover both domestic and imported product.
You know I have been in the trade side of things at USDA for a
number of years before coming over to the Agricultural
Marketing Services, and I remember a foreign trading partner
complaining about not being able to export into the United
States because we held them to a standard that we didn't hold
our own domestic folks to. And I think what you are describing
is exactly the opposite.
Mr. Barrow. Yes, exactly.
Mr. Day. And I think what industry is looking for and I
think what everyone is looking for at the end of the day when
Dr. Acheson finishes his Empire State Building is that we have
something that covers all food, both domestic and imported.
Mr. Barrow. Thank you.
Mr. Etheridge. [Presiding] The gentleman's time has
expired. The gentleman from New York, Mr. Kuhl.
Mr. Kuhl. Thank you, Mr. Etheridge, and it is nice, as a
Congressman from New York, to recognize that you recognize the
importance of New York state to this whole process of
prevention in building a system actually that will prevent what
we all know is happening in California. But anyway, aside, I
had another subcommittee hearing, and I didn't have the benefit
of being able to sit through your testimony and haven't had a
chance to read it either.
So at this point, Mr. Chairman, I would like to return my 5
minutes over to and yield to Mr. Neugebauer because I know he
has some additional questions.
Mr. Neugebauer. And I thank the gentleman. I want to go
back to, I think my colleague from Texas was talking about
making sure that we do this on a risk-based analysis, and I
think that is certainly the road we need to go down because we,
you know, a shotgun approach, we do not have the resources to
do. So we need to analyze where the greatest risk is, but let
us talk about what that risk is right now.
In a percentage of the total food supply that goes through
the U.S. system today, the contamination percentage, I mean
what percentage good are we? Are we 99 percent? Are we 98? Are
we 90, 80? When you look at the number, what number would you
tell the American people today? Can you say 99 percent sure
this is good, uncontaminated number? What is that number? I
don't want to put any words in anybody's mouth? Mr. Day, you
want to take a crack at that?
Mr. Day. I think I will just let Dr. Acheson handle that.
Mr. Neugebauer. It is nice to have friends like you.
Mr. Day. I am not a food safety agency.
Mr. Acheson. Thank you. That is an excellent question. Is
there a specific number? Obviously no, but if you think of it
in the context of the degree of safety, of the billions of
servings of food that are consumed in the United States every
day by everyone of us in this room, three times a day. And the
chairman explained how he had a foodborne illness recently,
linked to the peanut butter.
Just ask yourself how many meals have I eaten in the last
year, and how many times have they made me sick? You are 99.9
something, something, something, but it is not where we want to
be. We want to be close to 100 percent. We will never reach 100
percent. Let us not be unrealistic here. You are never going to
be able to grow fresh produce in an open field in an open
environment and guarantee 100 percent it is never going to have
bugs on it that could make you sick. You need to keep pushing
those frontiers back. So we are in great shape, but the goal is
to make it better.
Mr. Neugebauer. Well, and I don't disagree, and I think
particularly this is--one of the former colleagues were talking
about, when we were talking about importation, and it is at 15
percent and depending on what happens in years to come, that
percentage may grow. I think food safety also becomes a
national security issue, making sure that we know that the food
we are importing is safe for Americans as well as the food that
we produce domestically.
We probably have more control over the domestic side of it
than we do the imported side, and I think as we move forward,
when we look at what your risk-base analysis is, I think you
probably heard most of this panel say, and you were here last
week I believe, and we talked about looking at how we are
moving forward both at USDA and at FDA, making sure that the
countries that we are buying or importing those foods from are
following some of these same standards. With that in mind, I
guess one of the questions I wanted to have is you all
determining some of these updated best practices. How much
industry involvement is going on in working with the industry
in doing the research? Is there a collaborative environment in
developing those?
Mr. Acheson. If I can respond to that first, I would say
absolutely. I think there is a strong collaborative
environment. Industry has a lot of expertise that we need to
listen to and focus on and continue to work closely with them.
We work with industry in the development of many of the
guidelines and guidance documents that we have produced. So it
is key, and I believe that there is a strong relationship with
industry in these areas.
Mr. Day. And I would echo the collaboration with industry
that has been immense in recent months, especially after the
outbreak of E.coli in spinach. You saw the leadership of the
state of California and the California industry out there to
develop the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement.
In the area of research to help out FDA and Dr. Acheson and
give a plug for the secretary's Farm Bill proposals. We have
proposed a billion dollars of research to be devoted to
specialty crops, and perhaps as you review the Farm Bill, you
might want to look at tailoring some of that toward the
fundamental food safety questions that have been raised in this
committee.
Mr. Neugebauer. Well, that was my next question. You say it
is moving forward. How do you propose to move some of that
research money to fruit and vegetable?
Mr. Day. Well, we are certainly proposing that we increase
the amount of research dollars spent on fruits and vegetables
by a billion dollars in the next Farm Bill.
Mr. Neugebauer. Okay, thank you.
Mr. Etheridge. The gentleman's time has expired. Thank you.
Let me thank both of our witnesses. Thank you for your time,
for being here this morning, and we thank you for coming. And
we now will welcome the second panel to the table. Thank you,
gentlemen.
Mr. Day. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Etheridge. Let me thank our panelists. I will, in the
absence of the chairman, say to you that your full statement
will be entered into the record. And we would ask each of you,
after I have introduced you, to try to summarize it within 5
minutes. And we will begin with Dr. Robert Whitaker, Vice
President of processing and technology for New Star Fresh Foods
out of California. Our second panelist is Mr. Joe Pezzini.
Mr. Pezzini. Pezzini.
Mr. Etheridge. Pezzini, thank you. Vice President of
operations for Ocean Mist Farms in California on behalf of the
Western Growers Association. Dr. Martha Roberts, Personal
Assistant to the Director of Florida Experimental Stations on
behalf of the Florida Tomato Exchange in Florida. And Ms. Lorna
Christie, Vice President of Produce Marketing Association in
Delaware, and finally Ms. Caroline Smith DeWaal, Director of
Food Safety, Center for Science in the Public Interest in
Washington, D.C. Dr. Whitaker, please begin when you are ready.
STATEMENT OF DR. ROBERT J. WHITAKER, PH.D., VICE PRESIDENT,
PROCESSING AND TECHNOLOGY, NEWSTAR FRESH FOODS, LLC, ON BEHALF
OF UNITED FRESH PRODUCE ASSOCIATION
Mr. Whitaker. Good morning, Mr. Etheridge and members of
the committee. My name is Dr. Robert Whitaker, and I am vice
president of processing technology for New Star Fresh Food, and
fresh and fresh-cut vegetable company based in Salinas,
California. Our company produces a variety of conventional and
organic spinach, spring mix, and blended baby leaf salads and
specialties for food distributors, retailers, and private label
products for a number of retail customers.
I am also past chairman of the United Fresh Produce
Association and provide comments here today on behalf of our
association as well as myself. Our association is lead by a
board of directors representing leaders from every sector of
the industry, a 50-member food safety and technology counsel
including scientific experts from our member companies and a
staff with expertise in food microbiology, plant sciences and
nutrition and health. I want to compliment the committee today
for holding a very timely hearing, giving the ongoing focus on
food safety across the produce industry.
Due to the food safety issues across our country the last
few years and especially the last 9 months since the spinach
crisis have been at times frustrating and confusing but
simultaneously an encouraging and exhilarating period of change
and reflection for the produce industry. As we have heard
today, we have been through a food safety crisis that has
caused death and illness, eroded consumer confidence in our
products, cost our industry millions of dollars in product and
opportunities lost, and precipitated an avalanche of attention
and keen focus on produce food safety by the media, consumers,
customers, growers, and processors.
I have been asked to speak today about how our industry has
changed with regard to food safety, and what changes still need
to be made in the near term and where we go from here. So today
we find ourselves, as an industry, truly engaged with a wide
array of very positive activities and initiatives to improve
the food safety of our products.
And these include a true awareness and sensitivity to food
safety has permeated the industry at every level from grower to
harvester to processor, shipper, and customer. The buying
community has begun to ask more questions about the suppliers'
food safety programs. General good agricultural practices, or
GAPS, have morphed into commodity specific guidance for
tomatoes, melons, and leafy greens. The process of developing
commodity specific guidance for melons and tomatoes and GAP
metrics in California for leafy greens has brought about
several very important revelations for our industry.
There is a general lack of sound scientific data we can use
to guide the development of certain food safety best practices,
including water management, compost usage, buffer zones for
wild and domesticated animals. Absent sound science, we have
had to use what data is available to us and our very best
profession judgment to promulgate risk management strategies
and metrics aimed towards improving our industry's food safety
performance.
On a positive note, we have shown that our industry can
come together to share food safety information and
cooperatively developed improved practices for food safety. The
associations represented before the committee today, as well as
others, have served as a fulcrum to organize productive
discussions and hammer out decisions. This is an encouraging
sign for our industry as we move forward.
So we have seen a great deal of change over the last
several months with regard to food safety, but have we solved
the problem? I would suggest we are only in the first stages of
a culture change that our industry must go through with regard
to food safety. It is one thing to hold meeting to develop
improved practices, to testify before Congress, share our
collective experience in food safety and hold town hall
meetings on food safety in the production community. But we
must change our culture and place food safety as a national
priority.
As an industry, we must live our food safety programs every
day. We have to make GAP and GAP metrics more than just nice
notebooks of information on our office bookshelves. As a
nation, we need your help in driving scientific research to
help prevent future outbreaks. Many of our associations and
individual companies are stepping up to fund research, and that
is commendable.
Honestly, in order to reach the critical funding levels, we
must have government help. We have proposed a $26.5 million
annual research package devoted to produce safety research, a
small price to help prevent contamination and restore public
confidence in produce that is critical for them to consume and
better for their health.
Specific produce safety research that is field oriented and
implemented to find practical solutions is critically
important, and we urge the committee to devote specific funding
to this objective in the Farm Bill and to support the
appropriators in their efforts.
The single biggest change we can make in our industry to
stimulate the food safety culture change we need is for the
buying committee to recognize and only purchase from those
suppliers that have a keen focus on food safety, have
implemented GAPS, embraced the GAP metrics, and placed sound
risk management principles and science-based decision making to
operate their business daily and who continue to push the
boundaries to make their products safer.
This requires knowing our suppliers, understanding their
food safety programs, and separating out those who talk about
food safety from those who do food safety every day. I get
tired of customers who call and request our food safety
certificate. I am not sure what that is. Food safety programs
are not gold-embroidered certificates that guarantee safety and
received, can be filed away. They are multi-layered risk
management strategies, verification procedures and people
devoted to making the safest product possible. Buyers who do
not know these details about their suppliers' food safety
practices are not doing their part in the food safety
continuum.
By the way, processors who don't know these facts about
their growers are also needing to step up to this
responsibility.
The last area I was asked to comment on was to suggest what
lies ahead for industry in relation to food safety. I have no
magic crystal ball, but I can say that food safety will
continue to be the leading priority for industry as we fight to
rebuild consumer confidence in our products, improve our
relationships with regulators, and create constructive dialogue
and food safety partnerships with our customers.
More specifically, we will learn a great deal in the coming
months from the finalization and implementation of the leafy
greens market agreement and the GAP metrics they are based on.
We will likely also see a coalescing of food safety programs to
drive consistency and uniformity across our industry, working
closely with industry groups representing multiple regions in
the United States as well as importing countries, the FDA,
USDA, and the Association of Food and Drug officials to help
develop a consistent regulatory approach for produce food
safety.
No matter how hard our industry works, public confidence
ultimately depends upon government as the final health and
regulatory authority to determine proper food safeties----
Mr. Etheridge. We are going to need for you to wrap it up
pretty quick please.
Mr. Whitaker. Okay, I will just--there are three key
principles that we would like to drive home. We believe that
produce food safety standards must be consistent for an
individual produce commodity grown anywhere in the United
States, and consumers must have confidence that the safety
standards are the same no matter where the product was
produced. We also believe that achieving consistent produce
safety standards will require federal government oversight and
responsibility. And we believe the FDA must determine
appropriate nationwide safety standards. And lastly, we believe
produce safety standards must allow for commodity-specific food
safety practices based on the best available science. It is a
highly diverse industry that is more aptly described as
hundreds of different small industries wrapped up into one, and
clearly one size won't fit all.
Over time, I believe the industry will be able to employ
science-based approaches that are just now being developed to
minimize risk. Research that is just now in the formative
stages will be brought forward over the next 3 to 4 years. And
as we begin to understand how pathogens attach themselves to
produce, we can develop new sanitation strategies to more
effectively remove----
Mr. Etheridge. Thank you.
Mr. Whitaker. --pathogens.
Mr. Etheridge. Thank you. Let me remind each of you. Your
full statement will be included in the record. Please try to
keep it to 5 minutes so the members will have time to ask
questions. Otherwise, you will consume all the time. We will
get no time to ask questions. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF MR. JOE PEZZINI, VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS,
OCEAN MIST FARMS, ON BEHALF OF WESTERN GROWERS ASSOCIATION
Mr. Pezzini. Good morning, Congressman Etheridge. My name
is Joe Pezzini. I am the vice president of operations for Ocean
Mist Farms. Ocean Mist Farms is a family-owned company based in
Castroville, California that has been producing vegetables
since 1924. We are committed to both the art and science of
agriculture and have invested heavily in our plant breading,
growing, harvesting, cooling, and shipping operations which are
all state of the art.
I am very proud to be able to say that Ocean Mist Farms has
never had an outbreak of foodborne illnesses associated with
any of our products. I am also testifying on behalf of the
Western Growers Association.
But no company can take food safety for granted, and when
an outbreak does occur, it impacts industry as a whole and we
all suffer. It is incumbent upon us as an industry to do all we
can to prevent these outbreaks and to ensure that our products
are safe, every bite, every time. That, I believe, is the focus
of today's hearing, and I want to thank you for allowing me to
provide my thoughts on how the industry and government can
collaborate to prevent future outbreaks in fresh produce. In my
capacity as chairman of the newly created California Leafy
Greens Marketing Agreement, I believe we are raising the bar
for food safety in these commodities and that elements of this
novel program can provide direction and guidance as we begin to
develop approaches for improving food safety throughout the
country.
In essence, a marketing agreement is a legal agreement that
binds signatories to a common purpose. In the case of
California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, that purpose is to
certify the safe growing, handling, and shipping of leafy green
products to consumers. This purpose is carried out by the
industry first by developing an agreement on baseline good
agricultural practices. Second, contracting with government to
verify that these baseline practices are being met. And third,
communicating to buyers that the products have met the
requirements of the agreement. All of this is implemented under
the penalty of law using industry funding.
This collaborative partnership on the part of industry and
government, while in its infancy, has three key elements that
may be instructed for how to move forward on a national level.
The first element is that industry in partnership with academic
community is best positioned to develop the best food safety
practices.
The body of knowledge and science behind food safety and
the practices that may be utilized to reduce risk in produce
operations is changing rapidly. The industry and academic
communities are partnering to advance the understanding of risk
in pathways of contamination in production, harvesting, and
processing operations. We are working to fill concurrent gaps
in the understanding of the development of new tools to analyze
risk, detect pathogens, and prevent contamination. This is best
facilitated by the industry. It can revise their practices and
requirements quickly and effectively, if not bound by
government constraints inherent in the development of
regulation. Today in California, over $4 million in industry
funding has been committed to new research and education.
A second element is government should play a key role in
ensuring that industry is indeed walking the talk. While
industry and academia should take the lead on developing
practices and processes to prevent contamination, the
government can and should play a fundamental role in verifying
that the industry is indeed implementing the best practices
throughout the supply chain.
The solution as we have implemented in the Leafy Greens
Marketing Agreement in California is to have USDA-trained
inspectors employed by the government do the audits. It is my
opinion that without direct oversight of our industry by
government, we will do little to rebuild and restore confidence
of our industry and practices.
And the third element is that industry and government
should collaborate to enforce compliance and facilitate
recognition in the marketplace. The Leafy Greens Marketing
Agreement in California currently allows handlers to sign up
voluntarily. While we have had great success, and the current
signatories represent almost 100 percent of the leafy greens
produced and sold from California, we still have a few handlers
that have not yet signed the agreement.
To address the situation, we are researching the formation
of a marketing order for handlers to ensure that all
commercially handled leafy greens are included in the
California system. Compliance with the program will be
communicated in the marketplace using a mandatory service mark,
which will be placed on sales documents.
In addition, we will allow for use of a certification mark,
which will be placed on packaging, including those offered at
the consumer level. The marks would allow suppliers to
communicate that their products and practices have been
verified by government auditors to have met the requirements of
the marketing agreement.
To conclude, the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement of
California is a model for how we can address food safety on a
national level, which we must move toward. It can serve as a
template for other commodities and producer groups to pursue.
The marketing agreement meshes well within the goals and
objectives of the 2004 Produce Safety Action Plan issued by the
FDA. In California, we have chosen to pursue this path with
handlers as they account for all major commercial production
and sales of leafy greens. In Arizona, handlers are currently
pursuing the same tact, but not every state has the authority
for marketing agreements or orders.
The leafy greens producers in California and Arizona, which
constitutes more than 90 percent of the U.S. crop would like to
pursue this same pathway on a national focus. We would strongly
recommend that this committee consideration legislation to
allow for handler-based marketing agreements and orders at a
national level.
While we are proud of our food safety record, we remain
resolute in our commitment to do everything feasible to prevent
contamination. We look forward to working closely with this
subcommittee to ensure that we are empowered to make certain we
deliver products that are safe, every bite, every time.
Thank you, Congressman Etheridge and the subcommittee.
Mr. Etheridge. Thank you, sir. And Dr. Roberts.
STATEMENT OF DR. MARTHA ROBERTS, PH.D., PERSONAL ASSISTANT TO
THE DIRECTOR, FLORIDA EXPERIMENT STATION, UNIVERSITY OF
FLORIDA, ON BEHALF OF THE FLORIDA TOMATOR EXCHANGE
Ms. Roberts. Thank you, Mr. Etheridge and members of the
committee. I am Martha Roberts with the University of Florida,
and I am here representing Reggie Brown with the Florida Tomato
Exchange who is out of the country today. I have been involved
in food regulatory programs, food safety programs for about 35
years, and I am here representing the fresh tomato industry of
Florida, which provides 45 to 50 percent of all the fresh
tomatoes in the domestic market to American consumers.
The Florida industry actively responded on several fronts
after they received a letter from the Food and Drug
Administration in 2004 that was directed to the lettuce
industry and to the tomato industry, expressing FDA's concerns
on food safety. Not only did Florida work to respond, but the
Florida Tomato Exchange also worked with other tomato groups
throughout North America as a member of the North American
Tomato Trade Working Group, or NATTWG, which also includes the
U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
Currently, we are working with the food safety division of
the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services,
which is the regulatory agency in Florida responsible for food
safety. To establish a mandatory program of food safety for
tomatoes in Florida, the Florida state legislature has passed a
bill mandating a food safety program, and it is on the
governor's desk for signature at this moment. The mandatory
regulatory program will be the first of its kind in the
country, and the regulations are being drawn up from a number
of guidelines, including the ones you have heard of today, the
FDA 1998 Guideline on Preventing and Minimizing Microbial Food
Safety Hazards for Fruits and Vegetables, and also the 2006
NATTWG commodity-specific food safety guidelines for tomatoes.
To accomplish this, the Florida industry has worked very
cooperatively with FDA and with USDA and the state department
of agriculture and other members across the country to actively
explore and aggressively proceed in our efforts to establish
science-based regulation. The main goal is to prevent foodborne
illness. Addressing this issue through science-based sound
regulation allows for collaborative efforts to maintain public
confidence, which is so critical.
Every segment of the supply chain must evaluate their
specific risk factors and the necessary policies and procedures
to mitigate these, and this is what we are working toward with
all segments of the industry, from packing, handling production
to ensure that virtually all of the tomatoes currently pose no
risk to human health. The focus needs to be on the relatively
rare exceptions when microbial contamination occurs. And most
importantly, as you have pointed out, Mr. Etheridge, we need
the science. We need the research on which to base these
decisions. So the establishment of uniform, science-based risk
evaluations and mitigation procedures throughout the entire
food chain is essential to providing the safest food supply
system possible.
Nationally mandated and monitored regulations present the
best opportunity for accomplishing the goal of overall risk
reduction, but such a program must be based on commodity-
specific systems that implement risk-reducing processes and
that address legitimate, science-based food safety concerns.
The industry in both Florida and California has begun these
efforts to develop functional good ag practices and Best
Management Practices, and we are working together very strongly
to ensure that these are uniform from coast to coast. Mandatory
trace back capability is also a very key important part of this
system and positive lot identification throughout the system
that minimizes commingling as a part of the Florida program.
Mandatory compliance to the good ag practices and BMPs
throughout a national program of regulation and regulatory
oversight can significantly enhance the risk reduction
provided. The risk for fresh tomatoes will not go to zero
however. With current technology, significant reductions can be
achieved. Direct farm marketing of small quantities doesn't
pose a risk as such to the public health and should be
carefully exempted.
We are very pleased that we were able to provide a tomato
forum that was sponsored by the University of Florida and the
Florida tomato industry in November of 2006, and we brought
together seven eastern states, including your state of North
Carolina to ensure that we had commissioners of agriculture,
commissioners of health, all of the universities, all of the
industry working together with FDA and USDA to ensure that
these factors were considered.
Also, as you had mentioned earlier, we cooperated with the
Joint Institute of Food Safety and Applied Nutrition to have a
research priority setting workshop, and we would offer to you,
for the record, a list of the priority research areas that were
identified for tomato food safety.
In summary, the Florida tomato industry, along with other
tomato groups such as the California tomato farmers, are
proceeding on a path to improve the overall food safety
environment for tomatoes. This can be accomplished with good
science, common sense and cooperation of government and
industry.
We are very delighted that you are having this hearing and
that the federal government is proceeding, but at the moment,
federal regulations take time, and Florida is not waiting for
these to develop but are actively enhancing the food safety of
the tomatoes we produce by going forward with the mandatory
program until the federal program is in place.
Mr. Etheridge. Thank you, Dr. Roberts. Ms. Christie for 5
minutes.
STATEMENT OF MS. LORNA CHRISTIE, VICE PRESIDENT, PRODUCE
MARKETING ASSOCIATION
Ms. Christie. Thank you for the opportunity to be here
today. We certainly commend you for holding this hearing to
address produce safety. I represent the Produce Marketing
Association, the largest association representing the fresh
produce industry from growers and processors to wholesalers and
distributors to supermarkets and restaurants.
The industry's commitment to food safety did not begin on
September 14, 2006. It actually started generations ago with
American farmers whose traditions of excellence really formed
the very foundation of today's very sophisticated and global
industry. The growth and complex nature of the produce supply
chain demands that we approach food safety as a continuum and
also as a collective responsibility. With that in mind,
industry has spent tens of millions of dollars on the best
scientific knowledge available to protect our products and our
customers.
We also know that the consumer confidence in our products
is very fragile. We never have and we never will take that
responsibility for granted. Doing so would be irresponsible to
the public and harmful to our very own livelihoods. We have a
vested interest in providing consumers with safe and healthy
produce, as Mr. Pezzini has said, every bite every time.
With that in mind, we helped develop the industry precursor
to the good agricultural practices. We constantly are offering
training and education so our members can develop robust food
safety programs based on the best science available at this
time. We collaborate with federal agencies and participate in
industry coalitions to address produce safety.
In working with the Canadian Produce Marketing Association,
we developed information technology practices that facilitate
more rapid tracebacks. We are committed to doing whatever it
takes to protect public health and rebuild consumer confidence.
I know you share that goal, a goal that is essential in the
fight to improve the nutritional health of America's consumers.
I would like to highlight some of the activities that PMA
has been involved in on behalf of our members over the past
several months. We have committed $2.75 million in additional
resources to food safety. The chairman mentioned how important
research is. We could not agree more. So we have launched the
Center for Produce Safety at the University of California under
the umbrella of the Western Institute for Food Safety and
Security. It will coordinate fund and disseminate produce
safety research by bringing together experts from industry,
government, and academia to find out how to stop product
contamination. We have committed $2 million initially to help
launch the center. These funds have already been matched by one
industry company, and we expect more to follow.
California has committed an additional half a million
dollars. Please look closely at these commitments from the
industry, the state, and the university and help us support the
need for more research. We have committed funds for enhanced
education and training as well, for all parts of the supply
chain, including $200,000 to be used in training growers on
good agricultural practices.
And we, of course, applaud the work of other organizations,
including the successful effort to establish a California
Lettuce and Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement. In addition to
the efforts I have outlined, we offer the following
recommendations to address fresh produce safety. Efforts must
be prioritized on risk, focusing on those commodities most
likely to be associated with foodborne illness outbreaks. We
need a strong Farm Bill that addresses the interests of the
produce industry, including food safety research and technical
assistance for companies that need it to maximize their food
safety capabilities.
The actions Congress takes on the farm bill will have
direct implications for fresh produce safety. We all need to be
specific in our language. When we are talking about risk, there
are only a few commodities identified as more likely to be
associated with food safety outbreaks. Consumer communication
should be specific about products and questions and not portray
all produce as risky. Hundreds of commodities have never been
associated with a food safety outbreak.
We need a robust, Federal, commodity-specific safety effort
that is verifiable and applies to all products grown in the
U.S. and abroad. This effort must be based on sound science and
prioritized again by risk. And we, of course, look forward to
partnering with Federal or state authorities to better define
the traceability needs and those that are not being currently
met by industry practices.
Our first goal, however, is the public health, which is the
foundation of all of our efforts, our food safety efforts of
the past 20 years, our focus on consumer education and
confidence, our commitment of resources to this issue, and our
collaboration with everyone who can advance produce safety. It
is our livelihood. It is also our moral obligation.
Again, I thank you for the opportunity to speak here today,
and, of course, I am happy to answer any questions you may
have.
Mr. Etheridge. Thank you, Ms. Christie. Ms. DeWaal.
STATEMENT OF MS. CAROLINE SMITH DeWAAL, DIRECTOR OF FOOD
SAFETY, CENTER FOR SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST
Ms. DeWaal. Thank you so much. I am director of food safety
for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit
health advocacy and education organization, focused on food
safety and nutrition. We represent over 900,000 consumers in
the U.S. and Canada and accept no government or industry
funding.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates
that 76 million Americans get sick and 5,000 die each year from
foodborne hazards in the United States. According to CSPI's own
database, which spans 15 years, fruits and vegetables and
dishes made out of those products cause 13 percent of foodborne
illness outbreaks and nearly 1 out of every 5 illnesses
associated with those outbreaks.
A series of produce outbreaks last fall provided a wake-up
call for the public about the critical state of produce safety.
Following the spinach outbreak that sickened 205 people and
killed at least 3, tomatoes and lettuce were both implicated in
outbreaks sickening hundreds before year's end.
While the produce outbreaks of the fall 2006 have created
this call for more action, large-scale produce outbreaks are
not a new phenomenon in this country. Outbreaks from produce,
both imported and domestic, have resulted in deaths, both
severe and mild illnesses, and great market disruptions over
the last 10 years. Domestic produce is largely unregulated, and
FDA has done little more than coax, request, or warn producers
to improve the safety of their products.
Imported produce, however, has even less oversight, and
these products are also associated with a long history of
outbreaks. In my written testimony, I have discussed imported
raspberries, which sickened thousands of consumers,
strawberries in a school lunch program that resulted in
hundreds of illnesses in school children, cantaloupes from
Mexico also, outbreaks that continue for 3 years, as well as a
very severe outbreak from Hepatitis A in raw onions, resulting
in over 500 illnesses and 3 deaths in 2003.
Fresh fruits and vegetables are at the center of a healthy
diet, so it is critical that immediate steps are taken to
improve their safety. CSPI has petitioned the FDA to take
action to require that all fruit and vegetable producers and
processors develop written plans to identify where
contamination is likely to occur and how to prevent it. These
plans should apply first to high-risk products, such as leafy
green vegetables.
Specifically, CSPI proposes a three-prong approach. First,
FDA should require all growers and processors to keep written
food plans, which are designed by the farmer to address the
specific environmental conditions on the farm.
Second, FDA should develop standardized criteria for use by
the farmers for such items as water quality, manure use and
management, and worker sanitation.
Finally, the written plan should be audited at least once
per growing season by FDA, the states, or the buyers of these
products. And FDA should review these audits.
The produce industry is not waiting for the FDA to take
action and is moving forward in many important places with the
states of California, Florida, the Association of Food and Drug
Officials and others to develop specific and general standards
for different commodities. These standards can ultimately
provide a basis for FDA to take stronger regulatory action.
However, a big part of this problem lies with FDA itself.
Last fall's produce outbreaks are just the latest symptom of an
agency that is overwhelmed by responsibility but lacks the
staff and resources to function effectively. Between 2003 and
2006, there was a 47 percent drop in Federal inspections, and
FDA's current food program is facing a shortfall of
approximately $135 million. A Harris poll has documented the
result of this. Consumers have actually lost confidence in FDA.
It has dropped from around 60 percent confidence level in the
agency to 35 percent since 2000. This is a true and precipitous
decline in consumer confidence.
In summary, to ensure safety and restore consumer
confidence, prevention, early detection and control measures
must be in place at every step of fresh produce production to
help minimize food safety risks. Voluntary guidelines have not
been effective to prevent the food safety problems related to
fruits and vegetables. Congress should take this step to
mandate the food safety oversight should be in place all the
way from the farm to the table. Thank you.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you, Ms. DeWaal. Appreciate very much
you being here with us today. And thanks to all the members of
the panel. I am sorry I was not present for all of your
testimony, but I can assure you that I read it all last night
that was submitted to us. And I will also review the record of
today's testimony so that we can be fully apprised of
everything that you said.
I want to start out by asking a question of Dr. Whitaker.
Regarding the critical research questions of the day, who
should conduct this research? How much should it cost, and what
will the industry do to provide their part of this research?
Mr. Whitaker. I think that there is a consortium of people
who are capable of conducting this research. I think much of it
can be done in academia. There has been a number of research
proposals that have been put forward this year through the USDA
CSREES program that specifically address some of the food
safety issues that we have talked to today. So I would say it
is a partnership between academia and the industry.
As was indicated in one of my panelists here, there have
been a number of different people within the industry who have
also stepped up and put funds together. The produce marketing
association in conjunction with several of the processors in
our industry have put money to form a fund for research on
produce food safety that will ultimately go a long ways to
helping us get very practical, hands-on field level type of
research, which I think is important as we go forward.
As far as to the level of funding, it is way beyond my
purview to be to guess what exactly that is going to cost as we
go forward. However, I can't think of anything else we could
spend our money on that would be--is less important because
certainly the safety of our food is important to all of us,
both from a consumer as well as on up through the processors.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you. Ms. DeWaal, in the testimony that
you submitted to the committee, which I assume you presented
today before I got here back from the floor, you mentioned in
your written testimony that 76 million Americans have gotten
sick, 325,000 are hospitalized, and 5,000 die each year from
foodborne hazards.
Now, while I think that this problem is serious, I am not
so sure that numbers aren't misleading about the problem we are
speaking about today because frankly some of those problems are
caused by the mishandling in the home, mishandling in
institutions and restaurants. Those aren't farmers' problems.
Those are problems that may be documentable that people get
sick by the food they consume, but it isn't all the leafy green
vegetables from the Salinas Valley that are causing those
problems.
So I want to make sure that while we are very responsible
in this committee and in this Congress about dealing with the
hazards that can be presented to the American public that the
farmers that grow the best, safest, and healthiest fruits and
vegetables in the world aren't maligned. And so I would like
you to speak to that question please.
Ms. DeWaal. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think that is a very
important question. First of all, 76 million cases of illness a
year is too many. It is really 1 in 4 people each year may get
sick, and I think you would be surprised, as we were, to see,
as we look at outbreak data, which is a very small portion of
this total pool of illnesses, there is a very large
contribution. I mentioned 13 percent of outbreaks are caused by
fruits and vegetables, and within these outbreaks, we have also
noticed that the number of people who get sick is quite large
per outbreak, about averaging around 45 to 50 persons per
outbreak versus about 20 to 30 for meat and poultry.
The reason for that is probably because the outbreaks
aren't recognized earlier. They may be looking for E.coli in
the hamburgers rather than in the lettuce. But the bottom line
is that while it is probably a small proportion of the
illnesses, it is still a very significant proportion. And I am
sure the farmers don't want to see it as a growing proportion.
One other comment though. Consumers support farmers. There
is absolutely no question that we want our food grown in the
natural way on the farm, and that is not a question. The
question is simply are there things farmers can be doing
better, and I think the ones that have talked today would say
there are, that would actually help to reduce these numbers.
Thank you.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you, Ms. DeWaal. I am going to go for a
couple rounds of questions, but I know Mr. Etheridge may have
to retire from the committee on a very temporary basis. But I
am going to turn it over to him for 5 minutes of questioning at
this point.
Mr. Etheridge. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief.
Thank you for your indulgence. Dr. Whitaker, my first question
is for you. How varied are food safety standards for fresh cut
produce? And the reason I ask that question is because I think
I understood you to say that these vary from state to state.
And also what are your thoughts on the standards that are being
put in on imported fresh fruits and vegetables? Does it vary
from state to state? What are the standards as it relates to
those coming in this country outside the United States?
Mr. Whitaker. Yeah, as far as the variability amongst food
safety standards, most of the food safety programs that have
been employed around the country are based off the FDA's 1998
guidance to reduce microbial contamination in fruits and
vegetables. There is very minor fluctuations away from that,
but most of the programs that I have seen have been focused on
that particular set of guidelines.
Now, since that time, going back 2 or 3 years ago, some of
those have been enhanced now for leafy greens, lettuces,
melons, tomatoes. There is also one in production right now for
green onions and herbs. They are basically an attempt to
fortify those a little bit with very specific guidance for the
specific processes that are used to develop those crops.
And then lastly, the latest iteration, of course, is in
California with the leafy greens documents, which have really
attempted to put measurable metrics in place. So when we talk
it, it is not good enough to say that the water quality should
be appropriate agricultural use. Now, we actually define what
that standard should be, and so that we can measure against it
and verify against that as we produce our crops. And there are
several other examples of that.
As far as imports go, it really is dependent upon where in
the world the products are produced. There are a number of
different ways of looking at this. Certainly companies such as
my own that import products from Mexico, we employ the very
same standards in Mexico that we do in the United States. And
so the very same high level of standards that we have put
together on good agricultural practices are exactly what we
impose upon ourselves as we produce our crops.
Mr. Etheridge. Does that also mean the same kind of
pesticides et cetera that you use in Mexico that you use in the
United States?
Mr. Whitaker. Yes, sir. Our company employs the same
practices there. The market for our product is the United
States, so we want to make sure that the chemicals, any
treatments we use are absolutely appropriate for the United
States.
Mr. Etheridge. Good. Thank you, sir. Ms. DeWaal, let me ask
you a question as a consumer advocate. To what extent, as far
as you know, that the CDC and the state departments of
agriculture are coordinating with USDA and FDA on food safety?
And if this is occurring, is it occurring at an adequate level
from a consumer standpoint?
Ms. DeWaal. Representative Etheridge, we have been very
concerned that food safety is really spread out too broadly in
the federal government. The Centers for Disease Control----
Mr. Etheridge. In your comments, would you also give your
thoughts as it relates to one agency or one group handling all
this?
Ms. DeWaal. Centers for Disease Control actually manages
the outbreak investigation, which originate really at the state
level. But they don't even know until they identify the food
that is causing the illness, they don't know which federal
agency to call it. Is it USDA if it is the meat? Or is it FDA
if it is the spinach or the lettuce? We have long taken the
position that we need to have a unified food safety system,
which includes all products under the same umbrella, the same
budget, and the same administrator or agency head. We don't
have that today.
We have supported an effort to make this an independent
agency with a direct line to the president. We think that is
appropriate. It is how our environmental protection standards
are handled today, and we believe that food safety deserves the
same. We have not supported--and recently I issued a release
saying that we don't believe the Department of Agriculture is
the right place, which I know some members of this committee
have supported, to consolidate. And the reason is exactly what
Mr. Day said earlier from the Agricultural Marketing Service.
They are not a public health agency, and so it wouldn't be
correct to put a public health agency into that department.
Thank you.
Mr. Etheridge. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I
yield back.
Mr. Cardoza. Mr. Kuhl.
Mr. Kuhl. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Pezzini, I
don't want you to feel left out. Nobody is picking on you yet,
so let me be the first. And actually I will throw you a big
softball. Tell me why your industry preferred to use the
California Leafy Greens Agreement rather than pursue Federal
mandatory or state regulation?
Mr. Pezzini. Well, we felt in California that we had to
act. We had to act quickly, deliberately but quickly. And so
the fastest vehicle for getting food safety on a mandatory
level was to use the marketing agreement vehicle. And so it was
really a matter of expedience, and it was the easiest mechanism
to put this in place.
Mr. Kuhl. Okay, and you also mentioned obviously that your
industry is able to respond to research more quickly and
efficiently, I think, in your testimony. The reasons why the
industry is in the best position to develop the best management
practices?
Mr. Pezzini. Well, I think because largely the industry is
the one working with these practices. We have the expertise, we
feel, to collaborate with government in coming up with these
best practices. And truly the good agricultural practices, the
new ones that have been accepted into the marketing agreement
are a collaboration between the private and public sector.
In fact, the whole marketing agreement ideas are a real
collaboration. Here we have the industry coming forward with
standards that have been developed in collaboration with
government including the FDA and the Department of Health
Services in California. And bringing those forward to have
government auditors come out and verify that we are doing these
on the farm. This is the first program that has government
auditors out on the farm looking to see that good agricultural
practices are been employed.
It is an audit of process, and, I mean, this is where the
rubber meets the road right here.
Mr. Kuhl. Okay, great. Appreciate your response. And, Mr.
Whitaker and Dr. Roberts, I don't want you to feel left out
either. So I am particularly concerned about your support for
the mandatory food safety standards, and it appears that your
producers support that. I am curious as to whether or not your
farmers would be willing to pay for those inspections.
Mr. Whitaker. In a sense, Congressman, we are already
paying for it any time that we have an outbreak like we just
had where it costs the industry $100 million. I know in my own
company, it costs us almost $4 million, and we are just a small
player. So in a way, we are paying a great price right now for
this uncertainty.
We are also audited frequently. I know that it may not
appear that way, but for several years have had independent
third-party audits on our ranches. It is something we are very
used to. It is something we are very accustomed to having. It
is not an unusual occurrence for us, and we recognize too that
we are only as strong sometimes as our weakest link. So by
having a federal program where everybody is subjected to the
same standards, we basically take the competition part of it
out of it, and you put in place a program where everybody has
to follow the same standards. I think there is a lot of benefit
to that for our industry.
Mr. Kuhl. Well, I can understand the benefit, and I think
everybody in the room can. The question really comes down to
can the Federal government--I mean you have heard some of my
colleagues rail on the fact that there wasn't mandatory and
complete inspection on every facility and every farm across the
world. And I think most of us agree that is a tremendous task,
but the point is here you are asking for mandatory safety
standards to be put in place. And the question really comes
down to are your people willing to actually pay a price? Now, I
know there is a price to be paid in the marketplace for this
quote/unquote tinge, if you will, of having and growing unsafe
products. That is a personal one, but this is a program that
you are seeking, from my understanding of your testimony, that
would actually require the Federal government to employ people
to go out and actually do these kinds of things.
And I am questioning as to whether or not your farmers,
your producers, would be willing to pay a percentage or a total
cost of that to actually implement the program.
Mr. Whitaker. Well, again, we are now. We are already
paying for third-party audits to come through to our facilities
and to our farms. Part of the marketing agreement, of course,
will be also a fee associated with that. So it is something
that we are living with already. I think most important on that
it is not so much who pays but to have a standard that we can
all work to so that we remove a lot of the competing entities
and basically have a standard that we can work to make sure
that our products are as safe as they can be.
Mr. Kuhl. Great. Dr. Roberts, would you like to speak to
that?
Ms. Roberts. Yes, I would. Thank you very much for the
question. I agree with Dr. Whitaker that most of our tomato
growers in Florida already are paying for individual third-
party audits that are mandated by their buyers. However, they
have also voluntarily chosen to offer to pay for the regulatory
inspections that are set up under the new mandatory state
regulatory program. They have voted to voluntarily adopt these
good ag practices and BMPs until such time as the food safety
regulatory program in the state can set up the mandatory
audits. And then they will pay cost reimbursement for those
because they feel like even though they already have the third-
party audits, they feel for increased public confidence that it
is being done properly. It is good to have that governmental
oversight.
Mr. Kuhl. So it would be a cost of doing business then so
to speak.
Ms. Roberts. Yes, sir.
Mr. Kuhl. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I am over my time, and I know
you have some questions.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you, Mr. Kuhl. I do have some further
questions. I would like to start off by asking the entire
panel, especially from the producers' perspective and the
processors' perspective. Is it not true that your customers,
the grocery store chains and others, are requiring higher
standards of the produce that they sell in their chains? And
isn't that part of some of this well, that the consumers are
really demanding a higher level of security? For example, one
grocery store chain in California that I am familiar with
promotes that they test the fruits and vegetables that they
sell in their store.
Mr. Whitaker. Yeah, you are right. I mean we have a number
of different customers, all of whom have various food safety
programs. Luckily, like I said before, most of them are based
on GAP metrics and things like that. But in general we have had
a long history of programs in place where we provide audits and
data from our food safety programs to various retail customers
as well as food service customers and club store customers. So
it is something that is quite common right now in the industry.
I will say since last September, the focus on this has
heightened even more. There has been more oversight and more
questions, which is a good thing for our industry.
Mr. Pezzini. Mr. Chairman, if I might add, Dr. Whitaker is
right. We are all pushed by our customers. Everyone has a
different idea of what they want, what their expectations are,
but I think from a producer's perspective, we want that to be
science-based. If one company or the metrics say now that you
have a 20-foot buffer zone for a particular adjacent land use,
and then we have another customer come along and say well, I
want 100-foot buffer or I want 500 feet or 1,000 feet or a half
mile. What is the science behind that? Are they asking
something that is really not science based and is going to cost
us all a great deal of money to implement. I mean that is
really a critical issue for us.
So what we are hoping for, through the marketing agreement,
that we will establish a standardized audit and a standardized
set of best practices that everyone will buy into because they
will be science based and there will a rational reason for that
buffer to be a certain distance.
Mr. Cardoza. That is exactly the reason why I asked the
question. I will let the others of you respond as well, but
that is exactly the reason why I asked the question because
having uniformity--you are only as good as your weakest link.
And I recall two things. I mean I grew up in an agricultural
region. I still live there. I used to work on weekends with my
second father, a wonderful gentleman that owned a
slaughterhouse. And he was an older man, and I would go and be
his young boots on the ground, scurrying around helping him on
weekends.
And he talked about the fact that USDA inspectors were a
real pain to him, but it was the cost of doing business. That
he didn't always like what they told him that he had to do, but
it was--he would complain the entire afternoon about the USDA
inspector. At the end of the day, he said but you know what,
they do the right job, and they do the right thing, and they
keep this industry healthier than it was before.
And then he would lament the guy down the street who, under
certain kinds of regulatory schemes, didn't have to participate
in the same thing because he was a small guy, and it gave the
industry a bad name. And what I remember from my childhood, I
think, is absolutely applicable to today's climate. That the
vast majority of producers can do everything right, but one
small producer, for example, cannot get the message and can
really mess things up for the entire industry. And isn't that
what you are speaking to in a large degree?
Mr. Pezzini. Absolutely. We have all been painted with the
same broad brush, and yes, different producers have had
different height and sense of food safety. But what we have
tried to do with the marketing agreement is raise it up to a
mandatory level. Companies still can go above and beyond that,
but the question really is what they are doing really enhancing
food safety or not? And that comes from the buying community as
well.
We are hoping in time that we can coalesce this database,
this information, and really prove the best practices.
Mr. Cardoza. Very briefly for the rest.
Ms. Roberts. If I could respond a little bit, we have all
got responsibilities in food safety, all along the chain, you
know from a consumer all the way back to the grower. And the
food retail stores and the food processors have
responsibilities in the way they handle that food, just as the
grower and the person transporting and the person packing it.
So every single individual area has to have some science-based
practices that they are required to follow to ensure that the
food is safe all the way through.
And that is exactly what we need, and we are so pleased
that we hear you talking about the need for increased research
because we have identified some very key areas in tomato food
safety that, quite frankly, there are no scientific answers on
which to base the practices that we want to follow. And I think
everyone on the panel would agree. At the moment, we are basing
metrics on the best science available, but oftentimes we are
basing it on the science of water or other scientific areas in
the absence of some truly valid science to give us a sound
foundation.
So every one of these areas has food safety practices that
they should be required to follow.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you for that. I think you are absolutely
right, and I will have to tell the panel and the members of the
committee as well that I was thoroughly disappointed today in
FDA's response to those questions of research and an action
plan. We need significantly more research in this area.
To admit to the committee today that they don't know what
caused the problem, and I understand some things are not just
so knowable. But we have to figure out how pathogens come up
the food chain. That is something that we have to understand,
and that is something that the Federal government is truly
responsible for doing for everyone in the country. It is not
appropriate for just California Department of Food and
Agriculture to do research when it is also going to benefit
Florida. That is when the Federal government has traditionally
stepped up its research roles, and the fact that we don't have,
in my mind, an adequate plan for how we are going to advance in
the future speaks volumes on this problem.
Now, I want to get back to Ms. Christie and allow her to
speak, and then I will turn it over.
Ms. Christie. Thank you. You know, the word science based
really is the key factor here. It is also one of the reasons
why PMA is so pleased to be able to create the center for
produce safety at UC Davis. It is to actually accelerate the
very much needed research and make sure that our industry
members are actually all seeing the same research so we can
utilize the best science available to help improve our
practices.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you. Ms. DeWaal.
Ms. DeWaal. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to make two
quick points. One is your grandfather was right. Cheap food
sells. So the problem with relying on the retail sector to
police this program is that there will always be somebody
selling the food that they didn't buy. So it is critical to get
a level playing field both domestically across the board and
for imports that FDA step in and fill in these roles.
The second thing I do want to bring to your attention
though is that we have over 600 produce outbreaks in our
database. So we have a very comprehensive look at the problem.
Forty percent of the outbreaks are neuro-virus, which are
human-transmitted problems. Another 25 percent are salmonella
or E.coli. So as you look across the board, I mean whether they
know how that specific E.coli got onto that specific spinach is
less important to my mind than putting in place the standards
for manure, for water, for farm worker sanitation that will
address across the board the problems that we are seeing.
Mr. Cardoza. Well, I have to follow up on a couple points
with regard to your answer just now. I think it is important to
do both. I think it is important to have the standards, and I
think it is important to understand what caused the problem
because how do you develop the standards if you don't know what
caused the problem? And so there is a significant amount of
research. It is not either/or, and that is the problem frankly
I had with the FDA's response is that it is not either/or. It
is a comprehensive look at what is causing the problem and how
do we build confidence in the system back to where it should
be.
Frankly, we have probably always had these challenges, but
now we are learning more, and the media allows us to
communicate these outbreaks much more effectively. And groups
like yourselves are doing very responsible work, are compiling
the data for us, and so we are learning more.
So once we know, don't we have the responsibility at that
point to then do a better job with our practices? And I think
the answer to all this, we will agree, is yes. So the problem
is not so much in my mind finding fault for what has happened
in the past, but I do find significant fault in how we don't
seem to have a plan for how to get to the better place with the
exception of the California group that has self-imposed their
own marketing system. And even they admit that I don't think
that they feel that is the definitive answer to this question,
but that it needs more research and more discussion and more
thoughtful communication that will bring us all together
ultimately.
I am going to let Mr. Kuhl ask a couple more questions, and
then I am going to come back to you, Ms. DeWaal, because I want
to talk about what department this really needs to go in and
how we achieve that goal.
Mr. Kuhl. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the additional time.
It is a question for the panel because it seems as though we
have reached the point that everybody agrees that there is need
for additional research and it would appear to me, and I think
the chairman probably has a better handle on this, that
Congress will be providing, in this next farm bill, some
additional research.
The question I am concerned about is, knowing that there is
going to be some additional funding for research dealing with
issues like this, how can we best coordinate that kind of
additional supplement coming from the Federal government with
what the industry has already done? And you probably all have a
little bit different perspective, and that is why I am asking
the question to you as a panel. Dr. Whitaker, do you want to
start first?
Mr. Whitaker. One of the big things that we could do right
straight off is just address some very basic questions with
research about how these bugs get into our environment? Once
they are on the food, how do they live there? How do we get
them off? And how long do they persist in the environment?
Certainly additional research funding, whether that be
through the CSREES type of grant proposals that come through to
academia or whether they are done institutionally by the USDA
or the FDA, can help us address those specific issues. We need
to make sure that the research that we do is practical, that
can reach back out onto the farm so that we can come up with
procedures or methodologies that we can put in place to
mitigate against those occurrences happening on our food
products.
I think the apparatus exists through the traditional
granting agencies. I think the focus is what is necessary. It
seems that we haven't really focused any research monies on
food safety in the past, or at least to a large extent. And so
if we can do that, I think there is plenty of very capable
people out in academia and within the USDA, FDA and various
agencies to conduct this type of research in collaboration with
the industry.
And I think that is really important. I think the industry
needs to help play a role in setting some of these research
priorities and helping the various researchers understand what
that data means on a real-time, real-life farm experience.
Mr. Kuhl. Mr. Pezzini.
Mr. Pezzini. I would add that certainly a very good vehicle
would be this Western Institute for Food Safety, the newly
created Center for Produce Safety. That is a collaboration
between academia, government, and the industry, and you have
the three legs of that stool put together there. And that would
be one great vehicle for initiating research, practical
research, and Dr. Whitaker is absolutely right about that. It
has to be something that can be implemented on the farm. It has
to be good, practical research that has a lasting effect on
food safety.
Mr. Kuhl. Dr. Roberts.
Ms. Roberts. I fully agree that it has to be cooperative
and collaborative. That is why, in cooperation with GIP SAM, we
try to pull together all the researchers across the country
from California to Florida to New York to North Carolina to try
to at least look at the one commodity, tomatoes, first of all,
identifying what research had already been done, trying to have
these researchers cooperate with each other so that with the
minimal resources we have we didn't duplicate studies that were
out there, and then to try to identify all the data gaps from
both the industry's perspective as well as the regulators as
well as at the divisions themselves.
It has to be collaborative. It has to be cooperative. Not
only common sense, but it has to be economically feasible for
someone to immediately adopt it and to enhance food safety.
Mr. Kuhl. Ms. Christie.
Ms. Christie. I am not sure I could add anything as far as
the need for the research and the type of research that the
industry needs at this time. I can tell you that the goal of
the center for produce safety, and one of the major goals, is
to create a clearinghouse of existing research to prevent the
duplication that my co-panelists have talked about.
We are actually meeting next month with industry leaders,
academics, as well as members of the government. We actually
have an ongoing survey right now to address these very issues
that we are talking about and provide a global resource for
anyone in the produce industry so they know what is actually
ongoing, what has already been done. One of our members has
already donated $1 million of privately funded research that is
ongoing to the CPS. That is unprecedented, and it gives you an
example of the collaboration that is going on right now.
Mr. Kuhl. Okay, Ms. DeWaal.
Ms. DeWaal. Thank you. We have talked already about how a
problem may originate on the farm, but you can make it worse or
you can actually add problems to otherwise safe produce. So I
think some of the key research that would help us in our advice
to consumers is on the impact of washing. We know it won't
eliminate the hazard, but what kind of reductions can consumers
expect by washing in the kitchen?
The other question I have been asking is whether checking
the first wash water in a triple wash operation could actually
provide a critical control point. If you are checking that
first wash water and eliminating contaminated product before it
gets mixed in with other products from other farms, could that
actually provide a significant new hurdle?
And finally the impacts of refrigeration. We had to make
some adjustments to our advice. We give advice to our 900,000
consumer members, and a lot of that gets picked up by the
media. And we changed advice by telling consumers that
refrigerating this fresh-cut produce is very, very important,
but let us check the impact of that kind of advice.
So I can see advice going, not only to the farm level, but
also to the retail and to the consumer level.
Mr. Kuhl. Okay, thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you. I want to conclude this panel with
this final series of questions, and I want to start with Ms.
DeWaal in this. And I have suggested the USDA is the right
agency. You suggested that you don't think so, and I am going
to assume that the reason why you don't think so is because
there is a marketing branch and a promotion branch to USDA as
well as the food safety.
But I am going to disagree with your premise for a little
bit, and I want to challenge you. And then I want your feedback
on it because as I talked about my experience growing up in the
slaughterhouse, meat, poultry, and eggs are in fact regulated
by USDA. And from my anecdotal response to you, you know that
my second father wasn't at all happy with having to go through
the regulatory scrutiny and felt they were oftentimes too tough
on plants like his in exactly that situation.
Nobody likes to be the guy under the thumb of the
regulator, but there is also the acknowledgement that
regulation is necessary in cases like this. I would also submit
to you that the USDA stamp of approval is the gold standard in
organics and in meat. When you see that blue or purple label on
meat, people feel much better about the fact that USDA is
looking at it. And I am going to give you another reason why I
believe USDA is the right. I believe, a I believe that you said
or someone else, maybe it was the gentleman from FDA himself,
said that American public believes that the farmers are the
good guys in this process, that they want to do the right thing
and they want to comply.
And the problem, as I see it, is FDA is divorced from the
farmer. And USDA actually has the components through the
extension services and others that are routinely working on a
day-to-day basis with farmers. So if USDA got information that
a new practice was the best practice, they could easily
disseminate that information where FDA doesn't even have a
mechanism to do that unless they go through another agency to
do it.
And so I would submit to you that if you separate the
enforcement branch from the promotion branch, that they in fact
can and will do a good job at USDA. Secondly, I would submit to
you that, as the growers here and the packers and shippers have
all mentioned, that they have an inherent self interest in
making sure consumer confidence is up. And so when we are all
trying to do the right thing, the question is how do we get to
the right thing, and how do we ensure consumer confidence. And
based on that premise that I have set up, I would like you all
to comment, starting with Ms. DeWaal.
Ms. DeWaal. Thank you, and I appreciate your thoughtful
question because it is a great one. The bottom line though, the
difference that your grandfather was observing compared to what
FDA is that they are operating under two different statutory
structures, both of which are 100 years old, 101 this year.
The Meat Inspection Act sets up a system whereby USDA looks
at every single chicken carcass, beef carcass, and then they
look at it additional times as that carcass is processed into
the meat that we all consume. This is probably one of the most
regulated industries in the world. It is a very intensive
oversight system where the plant simply can't operate, they
can't open their doors if it is a slaughter plant, until those
USDA inspectors are online. And, yes, they do get that seal of
approval.
The FDA-regulated products, again, based on a law passed in
1906, are much more passively regulated. They regulate products
if they are adulterated or mislabeled. It is kind of after the
fact, and that is why we have ended up with an agency who looks
a lot like a fire department. They are running in to address
the problems with spinach or the Taco John and Taco Bell
outbreaks or the peanut butter problems, and now it is pet food
and animal feed.
But they look very much like a fire department because they
simply don't have the inspectors. USDA literally has almost 10
times more inspectors than FDA does to regulate food
commodities, much fewer in terms of the number of food
commodities.
My real issue, when it comes to USDA versus HHS versus an
independent agency, is looking at what role will the secretary
really play when it comes to food safety. And unfortunately, I
have observed in this administration and others that the
secretary of agriculture sees his or her principle mission as
promoting agriculture products.
You know this current secretary has spent far more time in
Japan trying to get the Japanese to buy U.S. beef following BSE
than he has on food safety issues in his tenure. And that tends
to happen to most of the secretaries. So we have supported
legislation sponsored by Congresswoman DeLauro and Senator
Durbin. It is called the Safe Food Act. It does create a
single, unified agency separate from both HHS and USDA. Thank
you.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you.
Ms. Christie. Well, this issue is still very much under
discussion with the PMA. We believe in an appropriately funded
FDA can do the job it needs to do to help protect the food
supply.
Ms. Roberts. I would say that the public nor the growers
care which letters identify the agency. They just want to have
a universal collaboratively decided position that promotes food
safety. We are following the issue very closely with our
industry. We believe that there should be a unified food policy
for this country that involves food safety as one of its
tenants. And we will just look to the wisdom of Congress and
all of the agencies to see how this is dealt with.
We work cooperatively with FDA, USDA, but there are so many
other agencies that have a component of food safety. EPA is
such a critical one with all of the chemical agents that we
have to use. So it is not just those two agencies. So we
strongly support a unified sound food safety policy for this
country, and we look to the wisdom of Congress to sort this
out.
Mr. Cardoza. Mr. Pezzini.
Mr. Pezzini. We have collaborated with all those agencies
in establishing or creating the new good agricultural
practices. I will say that we are using, and I mentioned this
in my testimony, USDA-trained inspectors to do the auditing.
They have the expertise on the farm. So from that perspective,
the USDA is much more familiar with agriculture in its setting.
Mr. Whitaker. I would say I agree with a lot of what has
already been said. My principle interaction, since I have been
in the produce industry, has been with the FDA. And 1 of the
things that I think that stands well for them is they do take a
science-based approach to problem solving, and they have
certainly shown a great deal of focus on food safety, as in
recent years with a number of guidelines that have been issued
that I went through today. But also onsite visits into Salinas
on fact-finding tours to help develop the best food safety
programs possible, but also to help educate themselves as to
the problems that we see on the farm level.
So again I think certainly what Mr. Pezzini said stands. We
currently work with USDA inspectors because of their on-farm
expertise. But a properly or appropriately funded FDA could
also bring something to bear on this issue.
Mr. Cardoza. Thank you. Well, it is clear that there is
still a lot of work to be done to further ensure American
consumers have access to the safest food supply possible. We
have the safest food supply available at this time, but all
know that we can do better. However, in our zest for action, we
must be careful not to create a regulatory environment that
stifles the industry while failing to meet the goals of
increased safety. I want to caution this because at 1 point
during the height of the spinach outbreak, I was informed that
some grocers were considering requiring 8-foot fences around
their suppliers' lettuce farms. Not only was this a hasty idea
that was ill conceived, but it would have offered little
protection for further outbreaks and could have been extremely
costly to farmers and to consumers.
Food safety outbreaks are not the place of knee-jerk
reactions even though that may be what some would like to see
happen. Instead, I firmly believe that there is room for
partnership and cooperation here in responding to food safety
concerns. My colleagues in Congress, both in the House and the
Senate and on both sides of the aisles, should learn from
California's leafy green industry, in my opinion, and Florida's
tomato industry on how to integrate science, research,
institutional knowledge into a comprehensive industry-wide
response.
But we must also carefully examine the strengths and
weaknesses of our current food safety structure, especially the
utility of several regulatory agencies, as opposed to 1 central
location, as Ms. DeWaal has testified.
I look forward to continuing to dialogue on preventing
foodborne illness, and I again thank the witnesses for their
thoughtful comments and their helpful insight in this matter.
You truly have helped us in our goal and effort to craft a more
effective policy for the country.
With that, under the rules of the committee, the record of
today's hearing will remain open for 10 days to receive
additional material and supplementary written responses from
the witnesses to any questions posed by a member of the panel.
This hearing of the subcommittee on horticulture and
organic agriculture is thereby adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:42 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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