New Hampshire firms fight bioterrorism
New Hampshire’s overall food and beverage industry is spread over 93 facilities, and contributes more than $707 million in value added to the state’s economy; the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, and awareness of public anxiety about food safety, lead food companies in the state to keep a close eye on their products
Spinach, white sandwich bread, cantaloupes, peanuts, green onions, lemon meringue pie. It reads like a regular grocery list, but these are not items you would want in the shopping cart. They are all foods recalled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Food safety is no small problem: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are 76 million reported cases of food-borne illness in the United States each year, leaving more than 5,000 people dead.
There is a lot to regulate, too: The food and agriculture sector alone accounts for roughly one-fifth of America’s economic activity, according to the FDA.
New Hampshire Sentinel’s Jessica Arriens writes that recent high-profile recalls — plus new congressional legislation aiming to reform food regulations — has put food safety in the spotlight once again. In March, President Barack Obama established a Food Safety Working Group to advise him on how to best upgrade food safety laws. The group has already issued its key findings, calling the nation’s food system “anything but flexible and coordinated … it developed in fits and starts as the nation’s attention turned to one crisis after another.”
Perhaps the biggest crisis that transformed the U.S. food safety system just had its anniversary a couple weeks ago: 9/11. In the aftermath of America’s worst terrorist attack, Congress approved sweeping changes to food safety regulations, through the Bioterrorism Act of 2002. The act gave the Food and Drug Administration new authority over food companies, including local distribution giants C&S Wholesale Grocers and United Natural Foods Inc.
The administration is responsible for regulating 80 percent of all food consumed in the nation, nearly $255 billion worth of domestic and imported food.
Arriens writes that New Hampshire’s overall food and beverage industry is spread over 93 facilities, and contributes more than $707 million in value added to the state’s economy, according to the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a food and beverage industry advocacy group. “Before 9/11, food security was not as strongly considered,” said Jonathan Eisen, senior vice president, governmental relations at the International Food Distributors Association, a Virginia-based advocacy group. “The physical security of our facilities was not as strongly considered as it might be now.”
The law instituted strict new record-keeping requirements, termed “one up, one down” in industry lingo.
Food companies must record the immediate sources and immediate recipients of each shipment of food.
The rule is meant to improve traceability in the industry, so if the
