This article is the archived version of a report that appeared in the June 2009 Consumer Reports magazine.

Recipe for safer food

Jen and Justin Krieger flew to Colorado with their kids recently for a family vacation. But they never got to play. On their first day, 4-year-old David began to throw up and soon got worse. When his fever spiked during the night, his frightened parents took him to the emergency room. He was released but became even sicker and ended up spending three days in the hospital, where he tested positive for salmonella.

At home in Alexandria, Va., the Kriegers heard alerts and news reports that salmonella had been traced to peanut products, including the brand of crackers that David had eaten on the trip.

The Kriegers believe that David was part of a salmonella outbreak that originated with Peanut Corp. of America; he was infected with the same strain linked to PCA products. Some 700 confirmed cases in 46 states have been tied to peanut products made with ingredients from PCA. The infection might have contributed to nine deaths.

Better oversight needed

The Food and Drug Administration, which oversees processed foods, produce, and seafood, had not inspected the plant since 2001. After the salmonella outbreak, inspectors found unsanitary conditions, rat droppings, and dead roaches. The plant's records revealed that the company had detected salmonella in samples 12 times in the previous two years; in each case the product was shipped.

Consumers Union, long a critic of the fragmented, understaffed, and underfunded safeguards of the U.S. food supply, believes that the following steps must be taken to avoid similar outbreaks:

• Congress should give the FDA the mandate and the budget to inspect every food-processing facility once a year and the authority to order a recall when needed. (Now companies do so voluntarily.)
• Companies must test for specific contaminants, report findings to the FDA, disclose what they did with the food, and detail preventive steps they'll take.
• The federal government must form a single food-safety agency. Now more than a dozen bureaucracies are involved.

In March, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services reported that his agency had tried to trace 40 food items through each stage of the supply chain; only five could be traced to their origins. And the president of Kellogg's, which recalled more than 7 million cases of cookies and crackers made with PCA products, has asked Congress for annual inspections of food manufacturers.