Hundreds of salmonella infections in recent months in nearly half the nation’s states, linked to consumption of raw tomatoes, again underscored the perils of fresh produce and the threat to restaurants posed by health agencies’ recurrent inability to trace suspect foodstuffs quickly to their sources.
Independent restaurants and chains ranging from McDonald’s to the smallest regional operations pulled tomatoes from their kitchens this month as government health officials tried to sleuth out the source of the outbreak, but within days most restaurants had begun to bring tomatoes back as the Food and Drug Administration cleared producers in many states and foreign countries.
As of mid-June, 37 states were cleared as safe sources, as were 19 counties of Florida. Still, the FDA told a June 13 press conference the “vast majority” of implicated tomatoes had come from central and southern Florida and Mexico, and those areas were the focus of efforts to trace the contamination. However, the Mexican state of Baja California was added to the FDA’s list of places deemed safe as sources of Roma, plum and red round tomatoes. Unimplicated in the outbreak were grape and cherry tomatoes and those sold with the vine attached.
FDA officials also said two branches of an unidentified restaurant chain had been linked to salmonella illnesses contracted through consumption of raw tomatoes by nine of the 228 people stricken in 23 states as of June 13, though the eateries are blameless, the agency stressed.
A public-health official in Chicago was quoted as saying nine salmonella victims there had eaten tomatoes in May from a restaurant that has several related branches but were not part of a national chain. However, the official said he didn’t know whether those cases were the same ones cited by the FDA.
Meanwhile, operators large and small were heeding the FDA’s clearance of specific sources. McDonald’s said it was resuming tomato usage, and Dallas-based Brinker International Inc., which had removed raw tomatoes from its chains’ menus June 8, started returning them June 12. “It has now been confirmed that the fresh tomatoes we source for Brinker brands come from FDA-approved geographical areas,” spokes-woman Stacey Sullivan said.
The salmonella outbreak was the latest in a growing number of foodborne-illness crises over the past decade that have been blamed on common produce items, from raspberries and lettuce to spinach and green onions.
“It can devastate a business, that’s for sure,” said John Hall, who chairs the product liability practice at the law firm of Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellot in Pittsburgh. “But if you have your ducks in order, you’re in a great position.”
To inoculate against liability in foodborne-illness outbreaks, Hall said, “the biggest thing companies can do—in addition to the obvious, which is wash the produce and have the employees wash their hands and regularly monitor that—is to make sure their upstream suppliers are following good manufacturing and good agricultural practices.”
In addition, Hall said, good record keeping at the unit level is paramount. “What restaurants should have in place is good, solid written procedures and training for their employees and especially their management for food safety and handling,” he said.
Livia Langton, an epidemiolo-gist and a public-health associate at the Eckert law firm, added that “restaurants need to have their documents easily accessible, because the FDA will knock points off and a negative light will be on them if they can’t produce the documents when the FDA shows up.”
Managers “have to be able to get copies of their records of vegetable-washing policies and how it was followed on the particular day the vegetables were processed,” Langton said. “They need to have the employee health records easily available. Even the tracking documents—if they have any stickers they’ve taken off the produce boxes—to document which produce came in on which date.”
In addition, operators need to communicate with their customers, said Chris Moye, a managing director with the business consulting practice of Alvarez & Marsal in New York City. “The consumer is looking at the restaurant owner and asking: ‘Is everything that can be done being done?’” Moye said. “It’s a trust and a brand issue.”
Federal health officials were having difficulty finding the source of the salmonella outbreak, which first was reported in April and became more widespread in May and into early June. Dr. David Acheson, the FDA’s associate commissioner for foods, said the trace-back procedures used after the outbreak were confounded by a lack of record-keeping in the supply chain for highly perishable tomatoes. Unlike bagged salads, for example, there are fewer production barcodes to follow in tomatoes, Acheson said.
Because of concerns about product liability lawsuits in food-borne-disease outbreaks, Pittsburgh attorney Hall advises operators to hire outside auditors to help assure that safety practices are being followed and to provide historical proof if litigation arises.
“Have your team in place before this happens and not after,” he said. “By the time the FDA gets involved, the cow’s out of the barn a long time.”