Taming the Egg Salmonella Outbreak Will Take an Inside Job

August 30th, 2010. By Hunter West

It’s ironic that just a month after new rules for egg safety came into effect, the US is hammered with one of the largest eggs recalls in its history due to salmonella poisoning. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had been working on the portfolio for the better part of a decade before the rules were finally rolled out like so many Grade A extra large whites and browns.

It’s a further irony that during the 10 years or so when the FDA was mulling over the rules, a grand experiment in the UK was being met with stunning success.

And that’s where we go for the back-story.

A similar outbreak of salmonella in eggs hit Britain a little over a decade ago. While Brits stared en masse at their scrambled yellows and wondered if they were safe to eat, the British government assessed the available safety protocols—similar to what the FDA was already considering—and decided a more advanced step was required.

So they started vaccinating hens—essentially attacking the problem from the inside out, and the results were spectacular. Cases of salmonella infection have effectively disappeared. According to the latest data from the Health Protection Agency of England and Wales, salmonella infections from eggs have dropped a stunning 96 percent since 1997. That represents a caseload of just 581 for 2009 in the entire country—down from 14,771 in 1997.

Compare that with about 142,000 cases each year in the US, according to FDA estimates. And that’s before the current outbreak.

The FDA knew about the grand British experiment when the agency started to contemplate new rules governing the egg industry. But it soured on the vaccination option early on due, in the FDA’s view, to a lack of commonality with the vaccines together with a lack of a trial large enough to afford conclusive results. However executives within the vaccine industry claim that the differences were minor and drugs used in both countries were equally effective.

As for a large trial, one needs only look to Britain to gauge actual, real-world results.

The FDA has said that if the new rules now in place had been brought in earlier, the current outbreak may have been avoided. Those new guidelines require testing for salmonella; if hen houses are found to be contaminated, then eggs must be tested. Eggs found to be tainted would have to be broken and pasteurized, which would afford less money to producers for their eggs.

But that’s just supposition, is it not? British authorities said ten years ago that such rules were insufficient to stem the salmonella problem there. More drastic action was required, and vaccination was the ticket. The results have been staggering and not even the waffling FDA can argue with that.

While the FDA hasn’t embraced vaccination for hens—which would cost about 14 cents per bird over its lifetime or less then a penny per dozen eggs—it has quietly acknowledged vaccination as a worthy effort, “encouraging” producers to vaccinate their flocks.

However ‘encouragement,’ is not the same as a mandate. The FDA can encourage all it wants. But even though, according to the August 24th issue of The New York Times, one-half to two-thirds of the major egg producers in the US already vaccinate their flocks (according to industry estimates) the practice won’t become de rigueur for the industry in the absence of motivation, without some kind of fire lit beneath them.

The Brits found their motivation in the form of an industry-sponsored seal. Only producers who vaccinate their flocks and adhere to basic standards are afforded to right to stamp their product with the so-called ‘red lion’ seal.

Eggs so identified are the only eggs purchased by suppliers to the major supermarkets in the UK. Thus, if producers want their eggs where the people are, they have to vaccinate.
Ninety percent of British producers vaccinate their flocks, with the aforementioned stellar results.

Egg safety will improve in this country—but it won’t be due to the FDA’s new safety guidelines. What will get the job done, sadly, is this latest outbreak. You’ll see more producers opt for voluntary vaccination of their hens if, for no other reason, than to market the fact that their eggs are the safest available.

Producers who don’t decide to inoculate, in turn, can market their eggs to purists who don’t like the thought of anybody messing with their yolks and egg whites. It will fragment the market, somewhat, but in the end consumers will likely never again have to assess whether their egg purchases will harm them.

It’s too bad that such an advance will occur not due to FDA rules, but in spite of them…

Tags: Egg Recall, Food Poisoning, Salmonella

This was posted on Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Emerging Issues . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.