Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack Addresses the Peanut Butter Recall and Explains USDA Services

Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack Addresses the Peanut Butter Recall and Explains USDA Services


The events of the past several weeks have provided us all with a stark reminder of how important it is to have a safe and dependable food supply. As consumers, we expect the food we serve our families to be safe and subject to a system of oversight that is up to the task of protecting our families.




I’m alarmed by the allegations that a domestic peanut butter manufacturer knowingly entered tainted peanut butter into the stream of commerce and provided contaminated product to school feeding programs. Americans need to have absolute trust in the safety of their food supply. The corporate irresponsibility and regulatory failure we have observed in recent weeks as the peanut butter recall expanded, warrants an in-depth review of how our current food safety system operates and what we can do to improve it and provide consumers with the safeguards Americans expect.




Despite the hard work of many at the Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration, more than 325,000 Americans are hospitalized each year because of food borne illness. It’s time that we establish standards that will prevent food borne illness, reform the way that we inspect and test the safety of food, and take steps to create a modern, unified food safety agency capable of reducing the risk of food borne illness. I have directed our team at USDA to begin the process of putting together a framework for improving USDA’s food safety system, and I look forward to working with other Administration officials to pursue broader, structural reform of our food safety system.




Although peanut butter is not one of the products regulated by USDA, the Department of Agriculture has participated in this current recall and has significant responsibilities for preventing and responding to outbreaks of food borne illness.




For instance, the USDA’s Farm Service Agency procures commodity products for USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service’s domestic feeding and nutrition programs. Together they are working to ensure that products manufactured within the expanded recall dating back to January 2007, are not being used in any FNS domestic feeding program. On February 5, as a result of the Salmonella outbreak and subsequent investigation, USDA suspended and proposed to debar the Peanut Corporation of America from doing business with USDA feeding programs, including the school lunch program and food banks.




We will demand that our children’s food choices not only be nutritious and wholesome, but also safe.




The USDA plays a critical role in ensuring public health and safety through its inspection program and requirement that countries that export meat and poultry to the United States meet standards equivalent to those applied to domestic facilities.




Our first line of defense in protecting the food supply is the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service inspection personnel. The Food Safety and Inspection Service has nearly 7,800 inspectors working in about 6,200 meat, poultry and processed egg plants every day of operation to ensure the safety of the food supply. For FSIS-regulated plants, we require each facility to have a risk management and mitigation plan in place and we collect microbiological samples and conduct visual inspections to ensure each facility’s food safety plan is working. As part of our overall inspection program, FSIS inspectors verify food safety systems and as party of their comprehensive system, personnel collect product samples for foodborne pathogens including E. coli O157:H7, Listeria and Salmonella.




There are a lot of successes here at the USDA, but as I have said we can always do better. The time is right to modernize the food safety system.




We understand that consumers have a lot of questions, and we are proud to offer a diverse collection of educational and informational resources for all audiences, including Podcasts, SignFSIS video-casts in American Sign Language, the virtual representative Karen who is available 24/7 to answer any food safety question, or our food safety experts staffing the USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline. 


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