Personal Injury Law

Some Take-Aways from ACI's 3rd National Forum on Food-Borne Illness Litigation

By Kenneth Odza

American Conference Institute (ACI) recently held its latest conference on food-borne illness litigation. The conference has been a fairly intimate gathering of the nation's lawyers, insurers and experts involved with food-borne illness litigation.

This year, I had the privilege of moderating an in-house counsel 'think tank.' The panel was composed of lawyers from a nice cross-section of food businesses: Yum Brands, Hormel, Fresh Express and SUPERVALU (though for each, food-borne illness litigation is a rare event)  A slide-deck from the panel can be found here.

Also among the presenters at this year's conference were Center for Disease Control's (CDC) Dr. Arthur Liang and USDA/FSIS representative Dr. Dan Engeljohn. Both presentations provided fascinating insight into changes afoot in food safety enforcement and policy at the federal level. Here are some of the take-aways:

• 'Outbreaks Waiting to Be Discovered' – Dr. Liang opined that, based on surveilled illnesses, most food-borne illness outbreaks are not presently discovered. He believes that recent data shows that there are perhaps 2-3 times more outbreaks nationally than what's been uncovered over the last few years.

• Food Safety Progress Being Undone by Retail Deli Operations – FSIS says there has been a 'steady increase in risky behavior at the retail level.' According to Dr. Engeljohn, budget authority is being sought to intervene with retailers, particularly smaller supermarket deli operations.

• Negative Tested Product Can Be Considered Adulterated - FSIS will be issuing a policy soon that for the first time will consider a 'negative tested product to be determined adulterated' under circumstances where an associated product tested positive for pathogens.

• Non-0157 STECs - FSIS will be finalizing methodology to detect non-0157 Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli (STEC).

Full post as published by Food Liability Law Blog on November 02, 2009 (boomark / email).