Media Coverage

Reflections on Food Safety in China

Dec 9, 2011

The Sleeping Giant Has Awakened: Reflections on Attending Food Safety Conference in China

by Julia Bradsher

Legend has it that Napoleon Bonaparte once said, when pointing to China on a map, “There, is a sleeping giant. Let him sleep! If he awakes, he will shake the world." I doubt there is a person reading this today that doesn’t know that China has become a significant force in the global food supply.

It is nothing new to say that our food supply has become an increasingly global one. It is estimated that 20% of our food in the United States is imported. This percentage is much higher when you look at certain food products like seafood and fresh produce. China is one of the fastest growing sources of U.S. food imports. It has emerged as the third largest supplier of imported food into the United States after Canada and Mexico.

With the growth of China as an U.S. food source, American public scrutiny and media attention has also increasingly focused on food safety problems in China. Food safety is also a concern among Chinese citizens, as well. This past year alone, there has been plenty: Glow in the dark pork, anti-freeze vinegar, exploding watermelons. While the Chinese government is trying to get a handle on food safety problems in their country, it is creating challenges for them and, oftentimes, embarrassment. It is an understatement to say that China has become a food safety hot zone.

Back to the Future?

About 25 years ago, when I was a graduate student, I spent a summer as an exchange student at what was then the newly established Shantou University in the southern part of the Guangdong Province of China. The China I visited was only 10 years beyond the Mao era. All aspects of life were controlled by the State, and privatization was virtually unheard of. At that time, over sixty percent of the population engaged in agriculture. There were seven telephone lines coming into the city of Shantou at that time, with a population of 750,000. A car was rare with hundreds of bicycles on the streets, tractors unheard of on the farms, and most Chinese had never personally encountered Americans. I remember having a woman walk up to me and touch my curly hair in amazement. Needless to say, the China I experienced in 1986 was like stepping back into a pre-industrial revolution era. We were cautioned to never eat food from vendors on the streets, only drink boiled water or bottled water, and never eat fresh fruits and vegetables unless carefully washed with known “safe water”.

Now, fast-forward to November, 2011. As the president and CEO of the Global Food Protection Institute, I had the opportunity to travel to Beijing to do a presentation on the importance of food safety training at the Fifth Annual China International Food Safety and Quality Conference (CIFSQ). The China of today is the second largest economy in the world. It is the third leading foreign supplier of agricultural and seafood products to the U.S. after Canada and Mexico. Virtually everyone in Beijing has a cellular telephone and wireless internet access is everywhere. Shopping malls are part of the Beijing landscape with food courts that include McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Pizza Hut. Thousands of privately owned cars on the road have been added to the bicycles, motorcycles, and scooters. Pollution in the air is the norm in Beijing – the entire week I was in Beijing in November, there was thick smog in the air. And yet, we were cautioned by colleagues to never eat food from vendors on the streets, only drink bottled water, and ideally, eat at the hotel, US fast food chains, and restaurants on the main streets.

The Conference

The CIFSQ was held in Beijing on November 2-3, 2011. This was the fifth year for the conference, and it has developed a very strong attendance of over 750 people that cuts across the stakeholders of food safety in China: regulatory officials (Chinese and other countries), food safety and quality personnel from food companies, food science and safety laboratories, training and certification organizations, to name a few.

If I had to pinpoint themes in the conference, I would say there are probably three to four. First, almost every keynote speech and breakout session carried a theme of collaboration and cooperation. In order for China to address its own domestic food safety issues, as well as the concerns of countries who import there food like the United States, collaboration, cooperation, and transparency will be needed. It was very evident by the tone of the speeches by Chinese government officials that they have embraced and made a commitment to improving food safety in the country. The most critical challenge will be to push the food safety and quality policies, practices, and infrastructure down to the level of food production.

The second theme that carried through the conference is the need for uniform standards in food safety. While I am not fluent in Mandarin, I can’t help imagine that all those attending the conference that were not fluent in English must have been daunted by the alphabet soup of food safety systems, standards, audits, certifications, and schemes: FSSC, ISO, HACCP, BRC, GFSI, IFS, and PAS. Mind you, I am not mocking or minimizing the importance and critical value of these. Rather, I am calling out our responsibility when you take into consideration the first theme of collaboration and cooperation. It behooves those of us who are from the countries that are importing China’s food products and those multinational companies that are seeking to participate in the economic opportunities in present in China, to demystify food safety and help get things down to the basics.

The third theme that was apparent throughout the conference was the imperative for all governments in our global economy, regardless of where in the world, to demonstrate to their consuming public, their commitment to improving the safety of the food supply. This theme carried throughout many speakers who represented several countries – Mike Taylor and Dara Corrigan from the US FDA, Li Tairan and Fan Yongxiang from the China Ministry of Health. From the perspective of the United States, the focus was on the Food Safety Modernization Act and the role that new law will play in regulating food exports from China into the United States. In China, there is a renewed commitment from top government officials to improve food safety and hold food producers accountable. One of the speakers at the conference indicated that there are approximately 720,000 inspectors on the ground in China who are charged with inspections to ensure the safety of food produced in China.

Managing Expectations

My overall take-away from my first trip to China in 25 years is that there is great need in China and that there are many organizations, including my own, the Global Food Protection Institute, that can assist China in rising to the occasion. Given that “the sleeping giant” is awake, and he is shaking the world, we can assist them in making up for lost time. In the United States, we’ve had almost 100 years to develop the infrastructure we have to ensure food safety and we’re still not getting it right – case in point the most recent outbreak due to Listeria-contaminated cantaloupes. When FSMA became law, it was the first reform in food safety regulation in almost 75 years. Therefore, we have to set expectations for Chinese food producers if they are going to import food into the United States, and, at the same time, we have to manage our expectations that they are going to be ready and able to change their processes in rapid fashion.

Being Catalyst for Rapid Change

When I returned to the United States and sat down to debrief with the staff here at the Global Food Protection Institute, I asked the question, “How can we be catalyst for rapid change in China?” Our answer was easy – training through our International Food Protection Training Institute.

In China as in other parts of the world, technology has advanced so quickly that it has outpaced more traditional regulatory approaches. Training will be key to ensuring a foundation is built to support food safety in China. Training will also help everyone get on an equal footing and learn new approaches to regulation and inspection. The growing complexity of food production, processing, and distribution challenge the expertise of regulators and inspectors and training will help to address those challenges. Finally, with the increasing demand for safer food and the volume of newly hired inspectors, the underlying base of food safety knowledge and skills is limited. Training will help bring that base of knowledge and skills to a higher level.

Training is a critical element to ensuring that all elements of the food system in China are at a performance level that will ensure the highest level of food safety. That means that regulatory officials, inspectors, food safety and quality personnel from food producers and manufacturers, food scientist, food laboratories, third party auditors, all have adequate training using a standards-based training approach.

[Food Chemical News]

Safety Issues from Private Auditors

Oct 29, 2011

Producers seldom hear of food-safety issues from their private auditors

By Michael Booth and Jennifer Brown

The Denver Post

Many of the most notorious food-illness outbreaks in recent years were preceded by glowing private safety audits of the producers, prompting calls for oversight of auditors and forcing grocery chains to tighten screening of cantaloupes and other food.

An inspector hired by Jensen Farms gave the cantaloupe operation a "superior" safety rating the same month contaminated melons were sorted by an unsanitary potato machine and sent to stores. Probing the subsequent listeria outbreak that has killed 28, Food and Drug Administration inspectors found multiple problems, and experts say an auditor should have flagged the issues.

It was only the latest incident when a "third-party" audit — slammed as an inherent conflict of interest by safety experts — failed to note deadly mistakes in a food operation.

• Nine people died and thousands were sickened after a salmonella outbreak at Peanut Corporation of America in late 2008. Investigators found goods were shipped despite positive pathogen tests, as well as rodents, leaking roofs and extensive mold. An auditor before the outbreak gave the company the "superior" nod.

• FDA inspectors found filthy conditions, from overflowing manure to maggot infestations, at two Iowa farms where hundreds of millions of eggs were recalled last year. Court files show "Record of Achievement" audit certificates before the salmonella outbreaks.

• Earthbound Farm regularly got passing audits before an E. coli outbreak in greens was traced to the farm. The 2006 outbreak sickened hundreds and contributed to three deaths.

• In 2007, after an E. coli outbreak was traced to frozen beef patties from Topps Meat in New Jersey, federal inspectors found multiple problems. The company's vice president questioned "why and how personnel from his company, outside auditors or consultants failed to find these noncompliances," according to a 2007 USDA document.

• And in a 2007 salmonella outbreak linked to Veggie Booty snacks, a third-party audit swabbed the manufacturing plant for salmonella but found none. Federal inspectors later found the bacteria in snack seasoning.

Few government inspectors

Farms or buyers hire the auditors in the absence of enough federal or state inspectors to make rounds, a cobbled- together system critics call an obvious conflict that must now change.

But food experts trying to sort out new FDA powers under a 2011 act were disappointed to learn domestic audits aren't covered. And they fear congressional budget battles will severely underfund those efforts.

"It's a system that doesn't appreciate truth-telling, even when human lives are at stake," said Amanda Hitt, director of the Food Integrity Campaign at the Government Accountability Project in Washington, D.C.

Jensen got 96 points out of 100 in its audit.

Food producers buying allegedly independent audits is a major flaw in the U.S. food system, critics say.

"I cannot think of one private audit that I've ever seen in 20 years that said, 'These are bad things, fix them,' " said Bill Marler, a leading food-safety attorney who so far is representing 26 people injured or killed by the deadly cantaloupes. A private auditor is not going to list a farm's flaws, tell it to shut down, then say, "I finished my audit — can I have my $2,000?" he said.

The gap between private audits that come before an outbreak and the FDA reports that come after is stark, said Marler, who has represented poisoning victims for two decades.

"The question you would ask is, 'Are we talking about the same place?' " he said.

Even if an auditor makes strict recommendations to its client, follow-up corrections are not always mandated. One example of that comes from the 2006 E. coli outbreak traced to a Nebraska Beef plant in Omaha.

Federal inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found the plant had not followed cleanup recommendations by third-party auditors. Among problems cited by federal documents: caked fecal matter still clung to animal hides before slaughter.

"These audits are not a substitute for safety," said Fred Pritzker, a food- illness attorney in Minneapolis.

The Jensen auditor, PrimusLabs, used a form of review where one year's suggested changes are not checked until the next year's inspection, according to copies of the last two years' audits provided to The Denver Post. PrimusLabs president Bob Stovicek defends the Jen sen audit, conducted by a subcontractor.

Companies can pay for a higher level of audit, Stovicek said, where the review is not complete until the producer makes corrections and posts them online. That online file is checked by an audit oversight group and is available to the buyer.

Retailers debate fixes

Many food experts say grocery stores — not food suppliers — should be hiring the auditors.

Since the peanut salmonella outbreak in late 2008, retailers have debated improvements to the system. One hurdle is that farms and factories don't have time to deal with numerous inspector visits, said Gerald Wojtala, executive director of the International Food Protection Training Institute, based in Michigan.

A possible solution is to have the FDA credential private auditors meeting its standards. Then grocery store chains would rely on those auditors.

Wojtala, whose institute has a grant from the FDA to help train inspectors, said he expects the federal government to one day take those measures.

The FDA says, however, that while the 2011 Food Modernization Safety Act gave it more power over auditors handling imported foods, it has no new authority on domestic auditors. In the past, the auditing industry and distributors have strongly resisted tougher FDA powers.

The Food Marketing Institute, the trade association for grocery stores, has a subsidiary devoted entirely to food safety. The Safe Quality Food Institute trains private auditors to match the institute's quality standards. Farms and other food suppliers seek out the institute's rating, which makes them more attractive to grocery stores.

Jensen Farms would not have passed an audit from an institute-trained inspector, said Hilary Thesmar, vice president of food safety programs.

"They slipped through the system, unfortunately," Thesmar said.

Grocers are re-examining their supply systems in the wake of 28 deaths and cantaloupe's ruined reputation as a result of the Jensen Farms listeria.

Costco will require its cantaloupes to pass a "test and hold" program before they make it to the produce department, meaning a few sample cantaloupes per shipment will be swabbed for bacteria. The load won't ship until lab tests clear.

"That is greatly going to improve the overall food quality in the marketplace," said Craig Wilson, head of safety for the retailer.

Whole Foods is considering adding pathogen testing of food and water at farms, and demanding audits of more produce growers and handlers. The grocer already requires audits in foods with past problems, including sprouts and salad mixes, a spokeswoman said.

Costco uses just nine third-party auditors out of the 120 to 130 available, Wilson said. Every food item in Costco stores comes from a producer inspected by one of those nine auditors.

"The audits that are done are incredibly thorough," Wilson said.

Wilson is among those who would support an FDA certification program of all auditors inspecting food along the supply chain.

"The real key to this is audit-company responsibility," he said. "Are they going to step in and help sort out the problem?"

Other grocery store chains were less willing to answer questions about their use of private auditors. Walmart and Safeway officials said they were always looking for ways to improve food safety but wouldn't elaborate.

Colorado cantaloupe growers are considering banding together with state experts to create a certification system for their threatened crop. Such a system may cost more — either in farmer fees or the state finding more inspection money — but others note how much money is wasted on food-illness outbreaks.

Injury attorneys estimate the Colorado cantaloupe cases alone may result in more than $150 million in judgments or settlements against Jensen Farms, its deeper-pocket distributors and the auditors.

[The Denver Post]

Long-Term Funding Helps IFPTI

Oct 17, 2011

Long-term funding helps IFPTI establish presence in Battle Creek

by Nathan Peck

BATTLE CREEK — Battle Creek’s push to become a center for food science recently got a boost with a $6.5 million U.S. Food and Drug Administration grant to the International Food Protection Training Institute.

The grant supports the training of food screeners over the next five years, gives the organization a stable source of funding and establishes the IFPTI as the lead training agency for the FDA. The funding allows the organization to broaden its programming and has drawn international attention to the IFPTI and the Global Food Protection Institute.

“Obviously, it is critical to our continued operation, and we are very excited about it. This allows us to move forward with the work we started and allows us to do a lot more that really grabs people’s attention,” said Gerald Wojtala, executive director of IFPTI. “It allows us to really make a difference.”

There is a significant hill to climb. Food-borne illnesses sicken one in six people in the United States, force the hospitalization of 128,000 and kill 3,000 each year, according to a study published Sept. 1 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act called for a national training center for food inspectors to ensure federal, state and local agencies have a consistent training to bring together an often-fractious food safety system. To date, the IFPTI has trained 1,800 food safety inspectors from 49 states.

Officials identified training as a cost-effective means to help create an integrated food safety system. The IFPTI focused on instructing regional and local trainers to make the best use of limited resources. The new law demands food producers and processors report outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. Ensuring consistent training will help standardize the system.

“By utilizing the resources and capacity at the federal, state and local agencies, training is the standard you can use to compare how you do all the work in the food safety arena,” Wojtala said.

Global interest, local impact

The IFPTI and GFPI continue to attract attention from around the globe as countries that export to the United States look to meet U.S. standards and as governments revamp their own food safety infrastructures. The IFPTI had originally intended to build out its domestic programming first and then follow by developing programs for international audiences.

The FDA grant directly funds training at the IFPTI. The GFPI draws separate funding from course fees and grants.

Demand for the training offered to U.S. food inspectors forced a change in plans, said Joan Bowman, VP of external affairs at the IFPTI and GFPI.

“As we are the first of its kind, there is a lot of interest in how we’ve organized ourselves. We are not just another training company. We have a process, a systematic approach to creating a training network,” Bowman said. “Countries like Saudi Arabia are in the midst of revamping their Food and Drug Authority, while we have had interest from Chinese officials as they export goods into the U.S.”

Paying dividends

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Battle Creek Unlimited (BCU) provided the initial investment into the IFPTI. The training center leverages private investment in food safety in the region, including the Kellogg Company’s $54 million investment in its W.K. Kellogg Institute for Nutrition Research – its research and development arm – and Covance Inc.’s $14 million investment in a microbiology and food chemistry lab in Battle Creek.

The rest of the world is taking notice, said Karl Dehn, president and CEO of BCU.

“The most significant milestone was to secure longer term funding. It is saying IFPTI has arrived. It allows the IFPTI to expand its presence and relationship with FDA and potentially opens other doors for opportunities with FDA and other governmental entities,” Dehn said. “For Battle Creek, this means that the overall institute will expand its presence … and there will be an increase of training taking place in Battle Creek, which opens opportunities for us to commercialize food safety technology.”

[MiBiz]

Invest in what we eat

Oct 13, 2011

Cantaloupe is the latest food contamination scare for American consumers. With at least 23 deaths from listeria linked to Colorado cantaloupes, it is the deadliest U.S. outbreak of foodborne illness in a quarter-century.

But it certainly is not the only one. Illnesses caused by tainted spinach, ground beef, peanuts and other foods in recent years have caused many Americans to question how safe the food is that they buy at their local store.

Statistics from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate an estimated 48 million Americans a year get sick from food-related illnesses. Approximately 180,000 of those cases require hospitalization, with approximately 3,000 people dying of foodborne illness.

Last January, President Barack Obama signed into law the Food Safety Modernization Act, designed to ensure the safety of the U.S. food supply by focusing federal regulators' efforts on preventing food contamination rather than responding when problems arise.

But the new law carries a high price tag: According to the Congressional Budget Office, implementing the act will cost approximately $1.4 billion over the next five years.

That spells trouble in a political atmosphere where most attention currently is concentrated on cutting government spending and reducing the federal deficit. An agriculture appropriations bill passed by the U.S. House would cut $285 million from the Food and Drug Administration's budget, including an estimated $87 million for food safety. A budget resolution passed by House Republicans last spring would cut food safety funding by 3.4 percent at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and 10 percent at the FDA.

But food-safety advocates in Congress are fighting to prevent such a decrease. As the budget battle continues, a poll commissioned by the Pew Health Group found that 71 percent of likely voters think the FDA is "essential" or "very important" to helping protect Americans' health and safety. That same poll showed 74 percent of respondents believe implementing the Food Safety Modernization Act is worth a 1 to 3 percent increase in food costs.

Clearly consumers are willing to pay the price for effective oversight of the nation's food supply.

Ensuring safe food is not strictly a health issue, either. There are significant economic consequences to food contamination.

Although the current listeria outbreak is only linked to cantaloupe produced in Colorado, it has had a devastating effect in California, the nation's No. 1 cantaloupe-growing state, where sales have plummeted as much as 80 percent and thousands of farmworkers have lost their jobs.

Closer to home, a salmonella outbreak in 2009 linked to peanuts forced Kellogg Co. to recall products and cost the company an estimated $70 million.

Battle Creek also has a big stake in the federal budget debate. Last month, the FDA announced it was awarding a five-year grant of $1.3 million per year to the locally based International Food Protection Training Institute to set up and maintain a nationwide network of training instructors, as mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act.

Despite tough economic times, food safety must remain a federal priority. As Food and Drug Commissioner Margaret Hamburg told an audience at the 34th annual National Food Policy Conference two weeks ago in Washington, D.C.: "If we want to ensure that our food is safer, we need to be able to invest in compliance."

That investment will help ensure Americans' safety and confidence in the food they provide their families, and avert the cost in health and economic losses caused by food contamination. It is a price worth paying.

[Battle Creek Enquirer]

FDA Boosts Food Safety Training

Oct 6, 2011

By Gretchen Goetz

The Food and Drug Administration is putting its money where its mandate is in order to improve food safety training across the country.

The agency recently awarded a $6.5 million grant to the International Food Protection Training Institute (IFPTI) - located in Battle Creek, Michigan - to boost the Institute's efforts to standardize food safety protocol across the country and make training more accessible to a greater number of professionals.

Enhancing food safety training is one of the changes required of FDA by the Food Safety Modernization Act, signed into law this January.

Over the next 5 years, FDA will give IFPTI $1.3 million per year to build a stronger infrastructure for training programs.

While this will help the Institute improve its own training courses - offered in Battle Creek, Macon, Georgia and Helena, Montana - it will also help IFPTI continue its work developing a standard training protocol for all programs around the country, including government and industry courses.

Smoothing out inconsistencies between training curricula is essential, says Gerald Wojtala, Executive Director of IFPTI. Standardized instruction means standardized practice, he explains.

"If a state inspector is doing an inspection in one state and a federal investigator's doing an inspection in a different state and a local sanitarian is doing a different inspection in still a different state, we will know what level they're performing at, and in that way we'll have some assurance of the safety of food."

This way, he says, the general public will have a way of gauging whether or not their food is being properly protected.

Improving the quality and consistency of food safety training is more important now than ever, he says.

In the current tight economy, "A lot of those professions are hurting in terms of a loss of positions," says Wojtala, "so that makes training all the more important because as they downsize, more people are taking on more responsibility."

This means that someone who at one time was only in charge of water sanitation might now be performing food inspections as well, and will need to be prepared for this position.

"There's a lot of folks that get into this profession who obviously have science degrees or backgrounds, but you don't go to college and take a course in being a dairy inspector or shellfish inspector," he explains.

Another component of IFTPI's work is tailoring food safety education to fit the variety of different jobs that affect the safety of the food supply - including food inspectors, veterinarians, quality managers at processing companies, and over 40 other professions.

The organization is currently examining the different food safety-related tasks required for each job in order to recommend food safety curricula for training someone in each of these positions.

While it is important to have a consistent base knowledge of food safety across the board, says Wojtala, people also need specific expertise depending on their food safety responsibilities.

Another way IFPTI - designed courses vary is in the way they are taught. Parts of a course may be taken individually online, and parts involve in-person exercises.

But in order to get any of these courses out to the people who need them, the country needs more people who can give this training, says Wajtola. That's why IFTPI will also be using its federal grant to augment its trainer certification program.

"If we're going to train all these people, we really have to bump up the number of instructors out there," says Joan Bowman, IFTPI's Vice President of External Affairs.

And IFPTI won't be going it alone.

"FDA has make a commitment to training, and so there are a number of other universities and associations that are going to be partnering with us and fleshing out this training network," says Wajtola.

To date, IFPTI has trained more than 1,800 professionals through its food safety courses. With its expanded resources, it hopes to increase the number of people it reaches, as well as to boost the availability of training around the country by equipping other companies and organizations with the ability to train their employees and members.

[Food Safety News]

Food Safety Institute Receives Federal Grant

Sep 27, 2011

Battle Creek food safety institute receives $6.3 million federal grant

By Mark Sanchez

A $6.5 million, five-year federal grant will enable the International Food Protection Training Institute in Battle Creek to further build out its ability to become a global destination for food inspectors.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration grant supports development of curriculum and best practices to use to train both public and private food inspectors, International Food Protection Training Institute Executive Director Gerald Wojtala said.

The not-for-profit institute previously received a $1 million grant to begin developing the infrastructure for food-protection training under the federal Food Safety Modernization Act.

“It really allows us to continue the work we’re doing with the FDA,” said Wojtala, noting Gerald Wojtala that a systematic, standardized approach to training food inspectors and developing curriculum has never been developed in the U.S.

“It’s kind of amazing that that’s really never been done, when you think about the global food supply and how food moves all over the world,” he said. “In this era of thrifty budget management, investing the country’s limited tax dollars in building the training infrastructure for the integrated food safety system is the most cost-effective way to ensure the nation’s food supply is safe.”

Formed in 2009 with backing from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and housed at Western Michigan University’s Kendall Center, the institute seeks to become a destination for training food-protection professionals from around the U.S. and eventually the world. Since the institute launched in the fall of 2009, more than 1,800 people from 49 states have come to Battle Creek for training.

The institute has received inquiries for regulatory agencies in other nations and from food-processing companies that are interested in sending their quality and safety inspectors to Battle Creek for training, Wojtala said. Trade associations are also making inquiries as well, he said.

Reaching out to partner with the private sector is a relatively new effort. The latest FDA grant, because it helps to show sustained commitment to the organization by the federal government to developing a standardized training system, can help further that strategy, Wojtala said.

“That opens a lot of doors and gets a lot of people’s attention,” he said.

Amid the vision of becoming a global training destination, Wojtala said the institute can be an economic driver in downtown Battle Creek’s reformation by becoming the center of a cluster of companies and organizations.

“We’re starting to see how this is going to go here in Battle Creek,” he said. “It really does drive some attention here.”

International Food Protection Training Institute is part of the broader Global Food Protection Institute in Battle Creek.

“Building an integrated system between federal, state and local agencies responsible for the safety of the nation’s food supply relies heavily on training, and the International Food Protection Training Institute is meeting that need,” said Julia Bradsher, president and CEO of the Global Food Protection Institute.

The International Food Protection Training Institute is slated to receive $1.3 million from the FDA for five years. Annual funding is contingent on the annual federal budget process.

[Business Review West Michigan]

Food Protection Institute Gets FDA Grant

Sep 21, 2011

by Matt Roush

BATTLE CREEK — The International Food Protection Training Institute, a non-profit organization delivering career-spanning, standards-based training to food safety officials, announced it had received a multi-year grant of $1.3 million per year from the United States Food and Drug Administration.

The funding will support joint efforts by FDA and IFPTI to implement the national food-training infrastructure mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act. This competitive grant is year-one of a five-year cooperative agreement.

Each year, foodborne illness strikes approximately 48 million Americans, hospitalizing 100,000 and killing thousands. The IFPTI and FDA are committed to bringing high quality training to food protection professionals to ensure a competent work force at all levels of government. IFPTI is FDA’s lead training partner in building the integrated food safety system. IFPTI has trained more than 1,800 food safety inspectors from 49 states.

“The International Food Protection Training Institute has made Battle Creek the national leader in food safety,” said U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who chairs the senate’s Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. “The training being done at IFPTI is preparing thousands of food safety professionals who are on the front lines protecting our food supply and keeping our families safe.”

Added Gerald Wojtala, executive director of IFPTI said, “In this era of thrifty budget management, investing the country’s limited tax dollars in building the training infrastructure for the integrated food safety system is the most cost-effective way to ensure the nation’s food supply is safe.”

And Julia Bradsher, president and CEO of the Global Food Protection Institute, said that “Building an integrated system between federal, state and local agencies responsible for the safety of the nation’s food supply relies heavily on training, and the International Food Protection Training Institute is meeting that need.”

The International Food Protection Training Institute (IFPTI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization building and administering the training infrastructure for the nation’s integrated food safety system.

Working with federal regulatory and public health officials, IFPTI is establishing and overseeing the implementation of a career-spanning food protection training curriculum that will increase capacity, and assure competency and equivalency throughout all regulatory jurisdictions in meeting established U.S. federal food safety standards.

IFPTI is an initiative of the Global Food Protection Institute. GFPI is driving the adoption of food protection policies and practices for a safer global food supply.

Financial support for IFPTI is provided by a grant from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and through the generosity of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

IFPTI’s training facilities are located in Western Michigan University’s Kendall Center in Battle Creek.

For more information, visit www.ifpti.org.

[CBS Detroit.com]

Vilsack and Stabenow Visit IFPTI

Aug 23, 2011

by News Desk

Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack paid a visit to the International Food Protection Training Institute (IFPTI) in Battle Creek, Michigan Monday to highlight the institute's contribution to food safety.

The institute uses the first-ever national food protection curriculum to train food protection professionals at all levels of government, in an effort to standardized food safety practices. Since IFTPI launched in 2009, it has trained over 1,700 highly skilled food safety inspectors from 49 states.

"The International Food Protection Training Institute has made Battle Creek the national leader in food safety," said Stabenow, who was instrumental in launching the project, which receives funding from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

"The training being done at the Institute is preparing thousands of food safety professionals who are on the front lines protecting our food supply and keeping our families safe," added Stabenow.

"We are grateful for the commitment that Senator Stabenow and Secretary Vilsack have made to protect the nation's food supply," said Dr. Julia Bradsher, president and CEO of the Global Food Protection Institute, the global project that established IFPTI. "Training programs, delivered at IFPTI, are essential to ensuring that food protection agencies have the skills they need to identify and prevent potential risks."

Jerry Wojtala, IFPTI's executive director, told Food Safety News last year that the institute aims to help implement the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which emphasizes the need for greater coordination on the state, local, and federal levels.

"We think it's important to integrate state and local agencies in a national food safety system, and really the only way you can assure that integration is successful is to assess and to train," said Wojtala. "We really think training is one of the key components in integration."

For more information, visit www.gfpi.org and www.ifpti.org.

[Food Safety News]

Stabenow and Vilsack visit Food Protection Training Institute

Aug 22, 2011

Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today visited the International Food Protection Training Institute (IFPTI) in Battle Creek, Mich., to showcase its role in protecting the public from foodborne illness and serving as a model for combating funding shortfalls through public-private partnerships.

IFPTI, which has trained more than 1,700 food protection professionals from 49 states, is poised to play a role in helping front-line staff across all levels of government implement the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.

"The International Food Protection Training Institute has made Battle Creek the national leader in food safety," Stabenow says in a statement. "The training being done at the Institute is preparing thousands of food safety professionals who are on the front lines protecting our food supply and keeping our families safe."

Funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and FDA, the IFPTI is awaiting news from the agency, perhaps as early as this week, on its latest grant request, says Joan Bowman, IFPTI's communications director.

At today's meeting, Vilsack highlighted the need for training food protection professionals to reduce the number of foodborne illnesses, a priority for the Obama administration, and called IFPTI a model of how to do business in the future, Bowman says. The training institute also will play a critical role in FDA's plan to better integrate federal, state and local inspectors, she added.

Earlier, the Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO), acknowledged the heavy lifting IFPTI must do to carry out FSMA. On June 17, AFDO passed a resolution, at its annual meeting in Texas, pledging complete support for IFPTI in helping FDA train federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, and industry officials.

[Food Chemical News]

IFPTI Seeks Better Food Safety Response

Jul 20, 2011

By Nathan Peck

BATTLE CREEK — As the E. coli outbreak in Germany that has killed 39 people continues to dominate headlines around Europe, experts warn that the U.S. food system is still at risk and could have significant consequences for agriculture, food processors and others tied to the industry.

As the source of the contamination remains elusive, there are lessons to be gleaned from the experience of food safety professionals in the United States. Bringing together the expertise of food inspectors, industry and public health officials, the International Food Protection and Training Institute in Battle Creek is working to improve the safety of the U.S. food supply and speed up the response to outbreaks of food-borne illness.

The U.S. has had a series of significant food safety incidents in recent memory, said Gerald Wojtala, executive director of the IFPTI. The difficulty is that there are competing interests behind the system’s response to emergencies.

“We are working toward a coordinated response to food emergencies. You want to be fast and you want to be right. You have to do both. We want to be both fast and right,” Wojtala said.

Thomas Tucker, director of the National Center for Biomedical Research and Training, said that the food distribution system in the U.S. leaves the nation vulnerable to such outbreaks. The NCBRT is partnering with the IFPTI and its training partners to deliver programs to help inspectors and the food processing industry get ahead of the problem and prepare for these outbreaks. The IFPTI is delivering courses on coordinating the national response to food emergencies.

“The deadly E. coli outbreak in Europe should not be a surprise. This type of outbreak could happen anywhere,” Tucker said in a statement. “We are especially vulnerable here in the United States with our complex processing and distribution system and high volume of imported goods.”

Identity crisis

The first indications of contamination often are wrong and can have devastating effects on agriculture. In the German outbreak, Spanish cucumbers were originally identified, then bean sprouts. Complicating matters was the slowness of the response. The longer it takes to put public health officials in touch with victims of the illness, the less likely it is those victims will be able to help them track the source of the contamination.

“When people ask the question: Could this happen here? Yes, it could. It has happened. We have seen a number of similar things that are happening in Germany: Misidentifying the product, slowness of the response, having difficulty identifying, controlling and containing the outbreak,” Wojtala told MiBiz.

Investigators of a 2008 outbreak of E. coli in the United States initially misidentified tomatoes as the source of the outbreak. From supermarkets to fast food restaurants, businesses pulled fresh tomatoes off their shelves. Unfortunately, the first indications were wrong: Green peppers were later determined to be the source.

“(Identifying sources) has gotten a lot better. We’ve learned from our errors in the past. There needs to be a lot more evidence now before FDA implicates a certain commodity,” Wojtala said. “Better evidence allows us to better implicate the product. We realize that this has a huge economic impact on those commodities, those companies, and consumers. It has happened in the past and we hurt the entire tomato crop in the U.S. as a result.”

Common tools, approaches

Complicating the work of investigators is that the diffuse healthcare, public health and food safety systems rarely speak the same professional languages. There are different decision trees guiding the process when information is shared among other members of the food safety system.

“We need standard training, but also standardization within the system. We have 3,000 different health departments with 3,000 different policies,” said Joan Bowman, spokeswoman for the IFPTI. “The standardization piece is so important to coordinated response.”

The Food Safety and Modernization Act helped clarify when public health officials must be notified about problems with food products and when products must be recalled.

“When a company becomes aware of a lab result that indicates one of its products has a problem, they are required to report it,” Wojtala said. “The big challenge is to help industry understand these new rules and that a lot of it is voluntary but a lot of it is also is mandatory.”

Talk early, talk often Wojtala said that information becomes the most significant commodity to a successful response.

“There is an idea that you don’t want to scare the public with information, (but) it really is a false premise. Frequent communication helps minimize impact and helps with consumer confidence,” he said. “The way you communicate with the public is important. It is not only having the best person out there talking to media and providing accurate and frequent information to the public. Today, there are better tools to get information out than before.”