E. coli outbreak points to systems failure in LGMA, FSMA

Food safety attorney Bill Marler said the outbreak of E. coli in lettuce points to a failure in systems that were put in place to protect the public in the wake of a similar deadly spinach outbreak in 2006. Marler believes the outbreak reflects a broader problem, which seems to affect the entire Yuma growing region, despite controls that were enacted in the last decade. “We are basically having the exact same outbreak that we had in 2006,” Marler told IEG Policy on June 1. “The size is identical. Then it was 203 [cases] with three deaths, now we have 197 with five deaths. So, I would make a pretty strong argument that the Leafy Green Marketing Agreement (LGMA) and the FSMA rule have been a failure. And the failure is not taking into account the environmental causes of E.coli. And it is exactly what we’ve got here.” Marler believes that FDA needs to increase transparency and abandoning the practice of protecting the names of companies implicated in recalls and outbreaks. @ https://iegpolicy.agribusinessintelligence.informa.com/PL216600/Marler-says-Ecoli-outbreak-points-to-systems-failure-in-LGMA-FSMA?vid=Agri