Our view: Romaine outbreaks expose farm-to-fork flaws
Almost any guide to healthy eating, including the federal government’s, advises that dark green, leafy vegetables are vital to a nutritious, balanced diet.
Yet two days before Thanksgiving, the federal government warned everyone to throw away romaine lettuce. Stores shouldn’t sell it. Restaurants shouldn’t serve it. Consumers shouldn’t eat it.
That’s because romaine contaminated with a virulent form of E. coli bacteria has sickened 43 people in 12 states, including one person who developed kidney failure, since last month. Last spring, another outbreak linked to romaine sickened more than 200 in 36 states and killed five.
After nearly a week of suspense over where the most recent tainted romaine originated, the Food and Drug Administration announced Monday that it came from northern and central California. Several major producers agreed to label romaine entering the market by region and harvest date.
The producers have strong financial reasons to label, so the FDA could remove its warning for products from other regions. But how long labeling will last, whether other leafy greens will be included, and how useful the labels will be for consumers are open questions.
Given the urgent need to get this information rapidly, why hasn’t the government been able to give consumers these vital answers before three outbreaks in the last two years killed six people? There are lots of answers, none of them acceptable, especially seven years after the passage of a new federal food safety law that was supposed to offer farm-to-fork regulation.
Despite that law, practices in parts of the industry are stuck in the dark ages. Rules require industries in the supply chain to keep records showing only where they got the food and where they sold it — one step back, one step forward. Many records in the spring outbreak, for example, were on paper or handwritten, making it a time-consuming task to trace the entire chain.
That outbreak was finally traced to romaine grown in the region of Yuma, Arizona, where an irrigation canal along a cattle feeding operation was tainted with the E. coli strain.
While the government is stymied, Walmart is already on its way to using blockchain, the database technology behind bitcoin, to trace every head of lettuce and batch of leafy greens on sale at its stores back to the farm where it was grown.
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb made a smart move when he recently hired Walmart executive Frank Yiannas, who put the tracing system in place, as deputy commissioner in charge of food policy and response.
That's a start, but the FDA still needs to write long overdue rules under the 2011 law. The leafy green industry needs to join the 21st century in tracing its produce. And the cattle industry needs to clean up its act.
Until then, consumers will be forced to play romaine roulette.