‘Food scares have become as common as Midwestern tornadoes’ – New York Times

By Dean Rotbart
Executive Editor

In Gardner Harris’s extensively researched article, The Safety Gap, which ran in the The New York Times Sunday Magazine last November, the vulnerability of the U.S. food and drug supply chain to foreign imports was laid bare.

The bottom line of Harris’s 5,200-word article was that huge volumes of pharmaceutical and food products (or their ingredients) are reaching U.S. shores each year and there are way, way too few inspectors to avoid major problems, such as those that arose earlier in 2008 due to tainted Chinese baby formula.

Now Mr. Harris, one of the nation’s toughest reporter watchdogs of food safety, pharmaceutical companies, and of the Food and Drug Administration, finds himself reporting on what Stephen Sundlof, head of the FDA’s food safety center, says is one of the largest food recalls ever: peanut butter.

More than 530 people to date have taken ill and at least eight people infected with salmonella have died from peanut-related products that are believed to have been manufactured by Peanut Corporation of America.  The first cases began showing up last September and despite the recall, which has impacted numerous companies including Kellogg and General Mills, fresh cases are still turning up.

The Justice Department and the FDA have begun a criminal investigation amidst evidence that PCoA shipped products it knew were tainted and didn’t maintain safe product conditions at its plant in Blakely, GA.

All major national news organizations are covering the story, although the vast majority of articles have been rather perfunctory recitations of FDA statements and actions.

Mr. Gardiner is one of the few national journalists so far to generate a feature-oriented article.  On January 30th, he and Pam Belluck wrote New Look at Food Safety After Peanut Tainting, which included an interview with the mother of a 7 year old who was afflicted.

“Food scares have become as common as Midwestern tornadoes,” wrote Mr. Gardiner and Ms. Belluck.  They went on to flesh out how the latest cases were detected and some of the reasons that federal health officials don’t respond more quickly once an outbreak occurs.

Here is a recap of Harris’s recent output:

•    (1/28) Salmonella Was Found at Peanut Plant Before (Anahad O’Connor and Roni Caryn Robin contributed reporting)

•    (1/29) Peanut Plant Broadens Product List Under Recall  (Robbie Brown and Clint Claybrook contributed reporting)

•    (1/30) New Look at Food Safety After Peanut Tainting – By Gardiner Harris and Pam Belluck (Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting)

•    (1/31) Peanut Recall Leads to Criminal Investigation

•    (2/3)  Peanut Product Recall Took Company Approval

Among his key sources spread over the five stories:

•    Michael Taylor, a food safety expert at George Washington University
•    Michael C. Rogers, the FDA’s director of the division of field investigations
•    Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut
•    Dr. Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the food center at the FDA

The Associated Press, collectively, has covered the peanut recall better than any other domestic news organization, using reporters in D.C. and in the afflicted communities to provide in-depth and broad coverage.

The AP uncovered records in Texas, for example, showing that a local peanut-processing plant run by PCoA was operating without inspections and isn’t licensed, as required.  AP also reported that the U.S. Army was taking action to remove some peanut-butter items from its European warehouses.

The AP’s reporting was so good that WSJ.com used it instead of its own staff reporters on at least three occasions in late January and early this month.

The Wall Street Journal looked to Jane Zhang, who covers the FDA for the paper, Julie Jargon, who watches consumer products, and Jennifer Corbett Dooren who covers the agency for Dow Jones Newswires, to handle its self-generated coverage.

On January 15th, Ms. Jargon and Ms. Zhang teamed to write Peanut-Butter Probe Focuses on Georgia Plant, which contains lots of core facts on salmonella and the peanut industry that were missing from most other news organizations’ coverage.

“Peanuts are the 12th most valuable cash crop grown in the U.S., with a farm value of over $1 billion,” Ms. Jargon and Ms. Zhang reported.  They added that the U.S. produced about 5.15 billion pounds of peanuts in 2008, up 40% from the year earlier.

Other reporters who’ve tracked the peanut products recall include:

•    Lyndsey Layton – The Washington Post
•    Brett J. Blackledge, Kate Brumback, Greg Bluestein, Liz Riggs, Elizabeth Dunbar, Kantele Franko, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Emily Fredrix – Associated Press
•    Alan Judd, Michele Ewing, Jeffry Scott – The Atlanta Journal – Constitution
•    Maggie Fox, Andrea Shalal-Esa, Ilaina Jonas – Reuters
•    Roni Caryn Rabin, Kim Severson – New York Times
•    Catherine Larkin, Alex Nussbaum, Dan Hart – Bloomberg News

Photo:  Pam Belluck on PBS in 2002

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