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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Food Safety In Question After Hepatitis Cases

Associated Press

Michigan doctors were stumped as schoolchildren fell ill with hepatitis. Federal “disease detectives” hopped on a plane and five days later sent out the word the culprit was frozen strawberries served in schools in possibly six states.

The government says it acted fast in fighting the mild liver infections. But consumer advocates wrote President Clinton Wednesday that this latest outbreak after a year of food-poisoning scares signals it’s time to create a single federal food-safety agency.

“The bugs are getting ahead of us here and we need to catch up,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

She says underfunded programs at the Food and Drug Administration, Agriculture Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention merely recall food after people are sickened instead of preventing harm.

Although the U.S. food supply is called the world’s safest, some 9,000 Americans die every year from food poisoning, and 9 million to 33 million are sickened.

Just in the last year, over 1,000 Americans were sickened by parasite-tainted Guatemalan raspberries, at least 100 got E. coli poisoning from lettuce, a child died and dozens of others were sickened by E. coli-tainted apple juice, and bad oysters left hundreds ill, DeWaal said.

Clinton didn’t immediately respond, but he has asked Congress for a $43 million food budget increase to, among other things, get these agencies to work together - and quickly.

“There are important challenges to e overcome,” acknowledged Michael Friedman, acting commissioner of the FDA, which is the nation’s top consumer protection agency but devotes just one-fourth of its budget - $225 million - to food.

“We’re working to further improve the safety of the food supply in this country,” added CDC Director David Satcher.