FDA Targets Processing of Spices in Bid to Make Supply Safer

(The Washington Post – Lyndsey Layton)

The Food and Drug Administration is reexamining the safety of a culinary staple found in every restaurant, food manufacturing plant and home kitchen pantry: spices. In the middle of a nationwide outbreak of salmonella illness linked to black and red pepper – and after 16 U.S. recalls since 2001 of tainted spices – federal regulators met last week with the spice industry to figure out ways to make the supply safer.

Jeff Farrar, the FDA’s associate commissioner for food safety, said the government wants the spice industry to do more to prevent contamination. That would include using one of three methods to rid spices of bacteria: irradiation, steam heating or fumigation with ethylene oxide, a pesticide. The bottom line is, if there are readily available validated processes out there to reduce the risk of contamination, our expectation is that they will use them,” Farrar said. But the FDA cannot currently require it.

Legislation pending in Congress would require food companies to take steps, such as treating raw spices, to avoid contamination. The measure would also mandate that importers verify the safety of foreign suppliers and imported foods. The House overwhelmingly approved the bill last year, but it has stalled in the Senate. […]

In developing countries, many spices are harvested by farmers from small plots of land or grown wild and gathered from different areas, where pollution and water problems can create contamination hazards.

“You can import shoes, tables, lamps and chairs from anywhere in the world and you kind of know what you’re going to get,” said Paul Kurpe of Elite Spice Inc. in Jessup, Md. “But when you import food, you’re importing their habits, traditions and their standards of food safety.”

Some say the spate of recalls over the past decade does not necessarily mean the contamination problem is growing. “In the last 15 years, food safety is just at an increasingly higher level of awareness,” Harris said. “We’ve got increased testing, increased detection methods. I don’t think what we’re seeing is necessarily a true increase in prevalence. I think it’s an increase in our ability to detect.” Read more here.