New law requires food processors to have written recall plan

New law requires food processors to have written recall plan

Panola Pepper Corp.’s Grady “Bubber” Brown said his company has had a food recall plan in place for years.

“We’ve never had to recall a product, thank goodness, but I think it’s important that every manufacturer have a plan to protect their customers and distributors,” said Brown, whose Lake Providence company produces almost 75 hot sauces and spice mixes.

Soon, every Louisiana food processor will be required to have a plan similar to Panola’s after Gov. Bobby Jindal signed state Sen. Francis Thompson’s food safety bill (SB 93) into law this week.

The new law requires all food processors to maintain a written food recall plan and report instances of contamination to the state Department of Health and Hospitals within 24 hours of when the processor learned of the contamination beginning Jan. 1, 2011.

About one in four Americans get sick every year due to food-borne illness and as many as 5,000 die, according to the U.S. government.

“It shocked me to find out how many people get sick and die each year,” said Thompson, D-Delhi. “You can’t open the newspaper without reading about another problem with food.
“It’s an issue we have to deal with, and I felt like the state needed to get up to speed.”

Thompson, who is chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, is scheduled to speak about the issue at the Southern Legislative Conference in Winston-Salem, N.C., next month.
“I think it’s the right thing to do at the right time,” Thompson said. “We have to protect our residents.”

The new Louisiana law was especially timely after President Obama said this week the federal government will try to boost the safety of some of the nation’s most popular foods, announcing stricter rules for the production of eggs, poultry, beef, leafy greens, melons and tomatoes.

Those new standards are an effort to reduce instances of salmonella and E. coli contamination.
The group, headed by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, is also directing the Food and Drug Administration to help the food industry establish better tracing systems if there is an outbreak, so the origins of a disease can be quickly found.

A new network to help the many agencies that regulate food safety communicate better will also be created.

Earlier this year a massive salmonella outbreak in peanut products sickened hundreds, was suspected of causing nine deaths and led to one of the largest product recalls in U.S. history. In the past month, Nestle Toll House cookie dough and 380,000 pounds of beef produced by the JBS Swift Beef Co. of Greeley, Colo., have been recalled due illnesses caused by E. coli contamination.

Brown said all of Panola’s products have a date and code and record of where they are shipped.
“It’s important for safety, but it’s also important to the people we do business with,” Brown said. “They want to know that we can act quickly if necessary.”