--- title: 1 Year After The Hepatitis Outbreak Is Our Food Safer? date: 2004-11-18T15:25:28-08:00 author: Bill Marler canonical_url: "https://marlerclark.com/news_events/1-year-after-the-hepatitis-outbreak-is-our-food-safer" section: News --- [All News](/news_events) / # 1 Year After The Hepatitis Outbreak Is Our Food Safer? FDA Recently Approved Produce Safety Plan Becky Thompson November 18, 2004 PITTSBURGH — One year ago, the hepatitis outbreak at Chi-Chi’s had us all asking tough questions about the safety of our food supply. But one year later, has anything really changed? Federal investigators linked contaminated green onions from Mexico to the hepatitis outbreak. But now, it’s possible you could still get sick from contaminated green onions. The United States stopped trucks at the border, sent inspectors into Mexican fields and heard a lot of tough talk. There was even a call for a congressional investigation. That never happened. State Rep. Melissa Hart said, “If it turns out that there was a similar source and there were no warnings, yes, they made an error.” Sen. Arlen Specter said, “If the standards are not adequate, that’s a subject for further FDA action.” Yet in the year since the outbreak, little has been done to tackle the problem of produce coming from farms with unsanitary conditions. That is, until now. The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a produce safety plan. The new plan is really a new way to start addressing microbial food borne illness associated with fresh produce. Its objective is to provide guidelines to prevent contamination of fresh produce, minimize public impact when it occurs, support research and improve communication between the food industry and consumers as well as between agencies federal, state, and local that are in charge of food safety. Critics say it falls short. Caroline Smith DeWaal from the Center for Science in the Public Interest said, “The bottom line, whether the produce is coming in from other countries or even grown domestically, is safe for our consumers to eat. The FDA can’t answer that question.” DeWaal calls the FDA plan’s focus on education and guidance the weakest form of regulatory response. Its failing, she said, is that it doesn’t call for inspections of conditions in fresh produce fields not only here, but outside the U.S. FDA Food Safety Director Robert Brackett said, “We will not be able to expand our personal surveillance over the border because we don’t have authority over the border.” Brackett said the U.S. is working with its international partners to encourage good agricultural practices in the countries that export to the us. DeWaal said, “It’s not enough to rely on foreign governments. The FDA needs its own authority to go onto foreign farms.” That’s the same authority the U.S. Department of Agriculture has when it does annual inspections of meat packing plants in countries that supply meat to the U.S. The agriculture secretary of Baja, a state in Mexico where much of the winter produce is grown for this country, said he would have no problem with the FDA conducting inspections there. That’s as long as they conduct the same field inspections in the United States. As of this year, in the wake of the Chi-Chi’s outbreak that linked tainted green onions to the Baja region, the state has mandated that all growers in the U.S. take part in a federal food safety certification program, a program that is voluntary in other parts of Mexico. The Mexican agriculture secretary added that, in the past, many growers in the Baja region relied on inspections by third party private companies, often from the U.S., but he said there was no enforcement of safety violations. 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