Food safety net under fire at hearing

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- A pet food maker's CEO and the father of a girl who may need a kidney transplant after being sickened by tainted spinach were just two of those who came to Washington Tuesday to call for much tougher oversight of the nation's food supply.

The witnesses, appearing before a House subcommittee investigating food safety, presented damning testimony about the Food and Drug Administration, an agency described as hamstrung by insufficient staffing and funding, and hampered by an inability to force companies that distribute bad food to get it off store shelves.

Government food supervision labors under a system so scattered and inconsistent that cheese pizzas fall under the FDA's jurisdiction while pepperoni pizzas are under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Lisa Shames, an official at the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said at the hearing.

The hearing came on the heels of an outbreak linked to pet food last month that killed at least 14 dogs and cats, as well as the rash of salmonella and E. coli over the past several months tied to spinach and Taco Bell restaurants in Pennsylvania and New Jersey that killed at least three people and sickened 600 more. Legislators called for a tightening of food safety standards on the federal level.

"We really need to look at beefing up the FDA's ability to oversee food," Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said.

Similar sentiments were expressed throughout the hearing by other committee members as well as a panel of parents and a woman whose mother-in-law unwittingly contracted salmonella from Peter Pan peanut butter, which she continued eating while authorities lagged in posting a recall notice.

Louisiana resident Terri Marshall said her husband's 85-year-old mother, Mora Lou Marshall, was eating the peanut butter as a nutritional supplement when the otherwise sprite woman became ill and listless.

"It seems as though our lives are segmented: Life before Peter Pan peanut butter, (and) now we have life after Peter Pan peanut butter," Marshall said. "The reality is the very food she thought would improve her health began to ravage her body."

Michael and Elizabeth Armstrong, parents of two from Indiana, saw their worst nightmare materialize when the spinach they worked to get their daughters to eat actually infected both girls with E. coli.

Now back in reasonably good health, Ashley and Isabella Armstrong played in their parents' laps Tuesday, oblivious of the serious business happening around them. Isabella, though, must take five medications a day after her ordeal and may need a kidney transplant.

"The one thing I found out is I can't protect them from spinach. Only you guys can," Michael Armstrong said. "I don't know what the right answer is but I know what the wrong answer is: to keep on doing what we're doing. It's not working."

Officials at the hearing said 76 million Americans each year are victims of food poisoning and 5,000 of them die.

Gary Pruden, who lives in Breinigsville, Pa., said his 11-year-old son Shawn grew violently ill following dinner at a local Taco Bell. He urged legislators to streamline federal food regulations to restore public trust in the domestic food supply.

Rep. Jay Inslee (R-Wash.) said he would be introducing legislation soon that would establish binding standards for the food industry; apply point-of-hazard identification programs already in place in the meat industry; set civil and criminal penalties for those responsible in salmonella and E. coli cases; and give FDA the ability to establish mandatory recalls.

Several legislators bemoaned the FDA's lack of real authority to order companies to pull tainted products off store shelves. Shames, acting director of natural resources and the environment at the GAO, said the office has been studying the issue and recommends giving the FDA mandatory recall authority.

Shames contrasted the FDA's funding with that of the USDA. The FDA oversees 80 percent of the food supply but only gets 20 percent of the federal allocation for food inspections, while the USDA's numbers are the opposite, she said.

The committee also examined the impact of last month's outbreak on the pet food industry, in which wheat gluten imported from China was injected with melamine, a protein-rich substance that proved toxic to some animals that ingested it.

At least two company officials present at the committee hearing charged that pet food makers from China deliberately perpetrated what Paul Henderson, CEO of pet food maker Menu Foods of Ontario, called a "fraud."

Stephen Miller, CEO of ChemNutra Inc. of Las Vegas, whose company distributed the infected pet food to companies like Menu Foods (Charts), echoed the statements of other company officials at the hearing when he apologized, then said his company reacted immediately upon learning there could be a problem.

Similarly, David Colo, senior vice president for manufacturing at ConAgra Foods Inc., whose Sylvester, Ga., plant produced the infected Peter Pan peanut butter, said the company did all it could to control the damage once it discovered the salmonella. ConAgra is spending some $20 million for upgrades that will prevent future occurrences, he said.

Dr. Anthony DeCarlo, a veterinarian at Red Bank Veterinary Hospital in New Jersey, said practitioners in his field need a more centralized source of information when problems occur with pet food supplies.