Chains tighten rules to curb food-safety risks

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan 8, 1996 by Louise Kramer

Three years have passed since a fatal outbreak of foodborne illness linked to Jack in the Box restaurants in five Western states profoundly changed the sense of security Americans have about the food they eat.

Four children died, and some 700 adults and children became ill in the epidemic, which was linked to undercooked hamburgers tainted with the bacteria E. coli 0157:H7.

Soon after the public's concern was heightened when a nonlethal E. coli outbreak, in which customers became severely ill, was traced to several Sizzler restaurants in Oregon. Health officials there blamed the pro em on cross-contamination of bulk-pack mayonnaise by leaky packages of raw beef during distribution.

Apart from the serious financial repercussions suffered by those chains, both events sparked loud calls to toughen up the nation's antiquated meat-inspection regulations and prompted the restaurant industry to revamp food-safety practices.

But three years later the laws for inspecting meat at slaughterhouses remain unchanged. Proposed regulatory remedies, currently stalled in a House subcommittee, would define scientific standards for the detection of bacteria like E. coli, create systems to trace contaminated meat to its source and give unprecedented authority to health officials to recall the polluted product.

Meanwhile, outbreaks of severe, E. coli-related illnesses continue. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control, some 20,000 cases of E. coli infection and several hundred fatalities continue to occur annually.

In fact, the Atlanta-based CDC blames nearly 4,500 deaths of restaurant patrons each year on food-borne illnesses of all types, according to statistics quoted at last year's COEX conference in Orlando, Fla., by Ron Magruder, who then was chief executive of The Olive Garden and head of the National Restaurant Association's foodsafety committee.

Nonetheless, some progress is being made in reducing perceived threats of disease and alleviating distrust among consumers.

Just last month the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved a steam pasteurization process for treating fresh beef carcasses to reduce the risk of E. coli 0157:H7 contamination.

Also last month the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued new seafood-safety regulations it says could eliminate as many as 60,000 cases of food poisoning a year. The rules require seafood processors within the next two years to implement quality-control procedures based on the principles of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points, or HACCP.

While the regulations don't directly affect restaurant operators, they stand to boost patrons' confidence in seafood safety, operators said.

Since the E. coli outbreak, major restaurant chains, with Jack in the Box in the lead, have been spending millions of dollars to revamp and upgrade their food-safety programs. They've imposed new requirements on suppliers, retrained staff and purchased new equipment, such as high-tech thermometers and specialized food chillers to maintain proper temperatures.

"We are creating a culture that instills in every employee that the safety and wholesomeness of our food is what matters because the consumer takes that as a given," said Joaquin Pelaez, senior vice president of technology and quality for Irvine, Calif.-based Taco Bell Corp., which has a multimillion-dollar food-safety program many consider to be state of the art.

Routine, fundamental attention to food safety is "a given," Pelaez stressed. "It is imperative."

While state-of-the art systems can help prevent outbreaks, the human factor poses the biggest challenge in providing patrons with safe food, industry watchers readily acknowledge.

"A lot of companies will tell you what they have done with vendors. That's the easy stuff. It's the no-brainer part," said Dee Clingman, vice president of 1,200-unit Restaurants, the Orlando, Fla.-based operator of the Red Lobster and Olive Garden chains. "The success of quality assurance in food safety is right there where the guests get the food."

In August, for example, 1,000 cases of salmonella poisoning in West Palm Beach, Fla., were traced to contaminated chicken improperly handled by workers in the kitchen of a popular local Mexican restaurant. Preliminary findings of a state investigation found "breaks in routine food preparation and the lack of following proper food-handling and safety procedures."

Joel Simpson, a food-safety consultant based in Memphis, Tenn., with 30 years' experience in government and the private sector, believes that heightened and then reinforced training of restaurant workers are keys to preventing outbreaks.

Recipes, for instance, rarely have food-safety measures included, Simpson pointed out. Using a chicken recipe as an example, he said that simply adding such basic instructions as "...take a clean and sanitized cutting board" can serve to avoid cross contamination.

"I think most companies are doing a better job," he said. "But you have to realize that all this food is being prepared by people, and when people get pressed to do things in a hurry, systems break down."