LOS ANGELES — A House of Representatives panel on
Friday inserted itself into the investigation of listeria-tainted
cantaloupes, which have been linked to 25 deaths in the nation’s
deadliest food-borne outbreak in a quarter of a century.
The
House Energy and Commerce Committee requested a staff briefing from
Jensen Farms, the Colorado farm that voluntarily recalled the
contaminated fruit Sept. 14. The committee also asked Jensen to protect
all documents and communications in the case.
“The
committee has a long bipartisan history of conducting food safety
oversight and is very concerned about these recent developments,”
committee leaders wrote. “We intend to learn more from the Food and Drug
Administration and the Centers for Disease Control, Jensen Farms, and
others who may provide insight into the causes of this outbreak and the
prevention of future outbreaks.”
The letter was
signed by six members of the committee, including Chairman Fred Upton,
R-Mich., and ranking member Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif.
A
total of 123 people from 26 states have been sickened by one of the
strains of listeria traced to the cantaloupes, according to this week’s
posting by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The latest
state to report an illness was Pennsylvania.
Twenty-five deaths have been reported. In addition, one woman pregnant at the time of illness had a miscarriage.
Earlier,
this week, the FDA sent Jensen a warning letter outlining the findings
of its inspection of the farm’s packing facility. The inspection took
place in early September.
According to officials,
39 environmental samples were taken and 13 were confirmed to have
strains of listeria. Cantaloupes taken from the farm’s cold storage area
were also found to have the bacteria.
Among the
possible contamination factors cited by officials was the facility’s
poor design that allowed water to pool on the floor near equipment and
walkways used by employees and hard-to-clean packing equipment. Some of
the washing and drying equipment used for cantaloupes had been
previously used for other raw agricultural products and that may have
allowed the contamination to spread.
The report
said the listeria could have been in the fields where the cantaloupes
were grown. It also mentioned “a truck used to haul culled cantaloupe to
a cattle operation was parked adjacent to the packing facility and
could have introduced contamination into the facility.”
Listeria contamination is often linked to animal waste or rotting plant matter that was not properly cleaned from machinery.
In
addition, there was no pre-cooling step to remove field heat from the
cantaloupes before cold storage, the inspection found. “As the
cantaloupes cooled there may have been condensation that promoted the
growth of Listeria monocytogenes,” the FDA said.
Jensen
has not been responding to the media. But the FDA noted in a letter
that the farm has told the agency that it has agreed to government
inspections of its growing, packaging and cold storage operations before
it resumes food harvesting, packaging or processing. Jensen Farms also
agreed to correct all objectionable observations noted during the
inspections, the FDA said.
The CDC last week said
it had confirmed a sixth death in Colorado and a second in New York.
Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico,
Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming have also reported deaths.
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