David Acheson is the nation’s top food detective, but so far he has met his match in the wily tomato.
With the salmonella scare that has plagued tomatoes, Acheson has faced perhaps his biggest test — at least as far as outbreaks of illness go — since he assumed the newly created “food safety czar” post at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about a year ago.
That position was born amid a growing concern that the FDA couldn’t get a grip on food safety, as tales of food-borne illnesses multiplied. Now comes salmonella-laden tomatoes that have sickened at least 277 people nationwide, hospitalizing 43.
Acheson led an effort that has narrowed the possible source of the salmonella outbreak, paving the way for classic round red tomatoes to start returning to supermarkets and restaurants in recent days, a week after many banished them.
But Acheson, a veteran food-contamination scientist, said that discovering where the bug originated may be impossible, which is not good news for tomato producers and consumers waiting for some kind of closure.
Unlike a jar of peanut butter — source of another big recent food scare — an individual tomato typically carries no information of its origin. “Off of that jar of peanut butter, you’ve got the history of that product,” Acheson said in a Tuesday interview.
And even though growers of tomatoes and other produce often voluntarily identify boxes of their product, tracking a bum batch is very difficult, Acheson said. “We have to find ways to do this better,” he said.
Consumer advocates agree.
“I think on this particular outbreak, [the FDA] is doing the best it can with the resources and tools that it has — which are not sufficient at all,” said Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives at Consumers Union.
Several scares
In recent years tomatoes have been the source of several outbreaks of salmonella, which causes diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps. The latest started in mid-April, when cases involving a rare strain of salmonella began popping up primarily in Texas and New Mexico.
The FDA concluded that the tainted tomatoes most likely came from Mexico or a certain part of Florida. The agency managed to narrow down the possible origins of the tainted tomatoes largely by a process of elimination. Based on the timing of their growing seasons and tomato harvests, many states or countries could not be the source of the tomatoes that caused illnesses, so they were deemed safe sources.
Restaurants and food retailers say they are now sourcing tomatoes from places deemed safe by the FDA.
The outbreak has been a particularly tough one to crack because it has been so widespread. Illness has shown up in people who frequented a variety of restaurants, and who bought tomatoes at myriad grocery stores.
The FDA’s best tip so far is a cluster of nine cases from the same geographical location. The Chicago Department of Public Health has also said that nine confirmed salmonella cases in the city have been linked to one North Side restaurant, but Acheson declined to comment on the location of the cluster targeted by the FDA.
A cluster can allow the FDA to better focus on tomato distributors and then move up the supply chain. Without a cluster, FDA investigators are left picking through the recollections of sick people scattered about the country.
“I’m optimistic this cluster can help us,” Acheson said. Then again, “it’s possible we won’t figure it out.”
Acheson has been pondering food poisoning since 1980. As a doctor in his native United Kingdom he specialized in treating food-born illnesses. Then in 1987 he moved on to research, becoming a professor at Tufts University in Boston, where he developed a reputation for his work on the potentially deadly E. coli bacteria.
Acheson felt a calling to public health and joined the FDA in 2002, a year after obtaining his American citizenship. In May 2007 he was named to the new FDA position of assistant commissioner for food protection.
E. coli outbreak
The FDA has come under plenty of fire in recent years, and Acheson has seen plenty of action, including a 2006 E. coli outbreak in bagged spinach that killed at least three people and sickened 200 others, and a wave of 600 salmonella poisonings that year linked to peanut butter.
The FDA eventually cracked both those cases, tracking the spinach to a California producer, Earthbound Farm, and the peanut butter to ConAgra Foods’ Peter Pan plant in Georgia. With spinach, it took the FDA about six weeks from the first reports of illness; with peanut butter, more than six months.
But with both those foods, FDA investigators could pluck a jar or bag from a sick person’s home, note its Universal Product Code, and start tracking. Stamping a UPC code on a tomato doesn’t work. To complicate matters, tomatoes from different growers are often co-mingled in the distribution process, Acheson said.
Tomato grower groups in California and Florida, the nation’s two biggest tomato producers, say many of their members employ tracking systems. It is common to see a box of tomatoes stamped with the fruit’s field of origin, time of harvest and other information, said Ed Beckman, head of California Tomato Farmers, a growers association.
However, Consumers Union’s Halloran notes that such tracking systems aren’t mandatory. “We need new laws that require full traceability,” she said.
Under a food protection effort led by Acheson, the agency is trying to obtain legislative authority to issue new handling regulations for foods — like fresh produce — that have been repeatedly associated with outbreaks of serious illnesses.
The FDA wants producers to be required to keep compliance records for any new rules. The agency also wants the authority to issue mandatory food recalls when voluntary recalls — the only kind now allowed — fail.
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mhughlett@tribune.com
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Other probes
Recent FDA investigations into food contamination:
BAGGED SPINACH
What happened: An E. coli outbreak killed at least three people and sickened 200 more in 2006.
Origin: A California producer, Earthbound Farm.
Length of investigation: It took the FDA about six weeks from the first incidents of sickness.
PEANUT BUTTER
What happened: A wave of 600 salmonella poisonings in 2006.
Origin: A ConAgra plant in Georgia.
Length of investigation: More than six months.
