Food Safety: An Interview With Joseph A. Levitt

by Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Americans enjoy one of the safest food supplies in the world.

Despite that fact, diseases caused by food in the United States are responsible for an estimated 76 million cases of gastrointestinal illnesses, 325,000 illnesses resulting in hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), Joe Levitt is responsible for directing programs aimed at ensuring the safety of the nation's food supply. Under Levitt's leadership, CFSAN is responsible for a wide range of other programs, including food and color additives, food and nutrition labeling, dietary supplements, and cosmetics.

Levitt and the nearly 900 CFSAN scientists, researchers, regulatory personnel, and support staff oversee products that account for nearly 80 percent of what Americans spend on food. Levitt recently discussed food safety and other current topics such as bioengineered foods and imports with FDA Consumer.

Q: Food safety remains a top priority with the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. What are the major accomplishments in the center's food safety program? Where are the center's food safety resources focused?

A: When I first took this job three and a half years ago, I said our top priorities would be: food safety, food safety and food safety. If you compare where we are today on food safety to just three or four years ago, you will see that we've made fundamental changes that increase consumer protection.

Food safety is a compelling public health issue. As part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the FDA's food safety programs affect every American, every single day.

The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) within HHS, along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and our state and local counterparts, have worked to significantly strengthen the food safety system in the United States. Together, we have implemented stronger prevention programs, new surveillance systems, faster outbreak response, risk-based research and risk assessment, and expanded education programs.

Virtually everything we do in the food safety program has a strong scientific underpinning. We work hard to make our policies data-driven and science-driven so that they stand the test of time. Our credibility comes, in large part, from the fact that objective, scientific evidence will lead us in the right direction.

Prevention is the foundation of our food safety program. The FDA has put several new prevention programs in place. We now have prevention programs for seafood, juice, fresh fruits and vegetables, and sprouts, and we are developing one for eggs. But, we also realize that prevention efforts will never be able to eliminate all diseases caused by food. Therefore, with our federal and state partners, we've put into place a much faster and more effective system of early detection and containment that we call "outbreak response." If there is an outbreak of foodborne illness, we now are able to jump on that case much more quickly — much more effectively — and save lives.

Probably the single most significant scientific achievement in food safety over the last five years is something that's referred to as DNA fingerprinting. What that means is we now have the scientific tools to take a sample from one patient, and see if the bacteria's DNA "fingerprint" matches that of another patient, or food, to identify a common source of infection. In other words, DNA fingerprinting speeds the "detective work" to determine when an outbreak has occurred. This enables us to more quickly respond to the outbreak, and prevent more people from getting sick. DNA fingerprinting is literally saving lives. The CDC has been instrumental in converting this new technology into a nationwide surveillance system called "Pulse Net."

In terms of resources, we have redirected our entire field inspection force to really focus on those food products that present consumers with the greatest risk for contamination with potentially harmful bacteria. Starting this year, we are conducting annual inspections of every company in the United States that makes one of these high-risk products so that we can ensure that prevention procedures are adequate and in place. This same strategy applies to imported food that arrives at U.S. borders. We conducted a survey of 1,000 samples of imported fruits and vegetables to identify which products were at highest risk for contamination. We then targeted our border surveillance to those high-risk products. We are now following up with a similar survey of domestic fruits and vegetables to help target our efforts inside the United States.

The bottom line is we are focusing on the highest risks, and we are targeting our efforts to be sure that we have them focused on where they do the most good for the American consumer.

Q: Despite the stringent measures already taken to protect people and cattle from "mad cow disease," some say that more needs to be done to keep nervous system tissue from affected cattle out of the U.S. food supply. Is the FDA considering additional steps to ensure that foods remain free from prion contamination?

A: While we have no evidence that bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly called "mad cow disease," is in the U.S. cattle herd, all of us must stay vigilant to be sure that we keep it out of this country, if at all possible. Starting seven years ago, the FDA put in place a series of programs that are designed to help minimize the risk of mad cow disease entering the United States. Over the past year, we have been getting reports from around the world that the disease has spread into some countries where it hadn't been found before. We, like virtually every other country in the world, are taking another look at all our programs to see if there are any new safeguards we need to put in place based on this new information.

We continue to work hand-in-hand with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to ensure that those guarding our borders have a complete listing of any food, supplement, or cosmetic products that may need to be screened before coming into the country. In addition, we continually re-evaluate our regulations to see if there are areas that can and should be strengthened. The bottom line is we want to take any steps that we can and should take to ensure that mad cow disease stays out of this country and out of any of our foods, supplements, or cosmetics.

About the Author

www.fda.gov
FDA is A United States government body that oversees medical devices, including contact lenses, intraocular lenses, excimer lasers and eyedrops. In the US, these products must be approved by the FDA before they can be marketed.