Food-safety warning shots hear 'round the world

Nation's Restaurant News, Feb 10, 1997 by Richard Martin

LOS ANGELES -- A week long, round-the-world fusillade of food-safety warning shots -- ranging from a landmark bankruptcy in Japan to a massive Big Mac embargo in Denmark to President Clinton's call for deployment of $43 million in new safeguards -- underscored a simultaneous effort here by the National Restaurant Association to escalate the war an food poisoning.

The coincidence of so many food-safety bombshells exploding recently in a sevenday-span may have shaken restaurateurs' faith in safety reforms made since a deadly burger-borne epidemic swept through five Western states four years ago, nearly killing a 1 billion fast-food chain.

The first salvo of the week came with the Jan. 19 Tokyo court filing for "corporate rehabilitation" by troubled foodservice giant Kyotaru Co. Ltd., former owner of New York-based Restaurant Associates, the Acapulco dinner-house chain in California and a major Arby's franchise there.

Kyotaru -- it still owns the Hungry Hunter and Mountain Jack's steak chain in the United States but derives a vulnerable two-thirds of its revenues from Japan's largest chain of take-out sushi shops -- said major factors forcing its Chapter 11-like action were sales slumps caused by customers' fears last year about Britain's "mad cow disease" and Japan's own E. coli bacterial epidemic. That outbreak claimed 11 lives last summer and affected another 11,000 victims, mostly children who consumed tainted school lunches.

In a prophetic interview with Nation's Restaurant News eight years ago, Kyotaru chairman Hiroshi Tanaka said restaurateurs "must strive for a higher level of sanitation" because "the day may come when one opens the doors to find [restaurants have] been totally rejected by consumers. I am very afraid of that."

The day after Kyotaru's filing, a panel of well-known foodservice leaders made a scheduled appearance at the National Restaurant Association board of directors meeting in Los Angeles to urge a broader adoption of food-safety measures by their colleagues. The group, under the aegis of the Industry Council on Food Safety, painted dire scenarios of restaurateurs, potentially crippling legal liabilities and business-casualty risks.

One panelist, PepsiCo Casual Dining chairman John Martin, warned of widespread "denial" among foodservice operators over food-safety issues. "The reality is, we've killed and made sick a lot more people than we realize," Martin said, echoing a federal official at the meeting who quoted statistics linking restaurants to more than a third of this country's millions of food-borne illnesses annually, about 9,000 of which are fatal.

Just days after the NRA board briefing, two more bombs were dropped in the global food-safety war zone.

On Jan. 24 all 70 McDonald's restaurants in Denmark suspended hamburger sales temporarily and hastily replaced meat and cheese stocks after health investigators there targeted Big Mac sandwiches as the suspected cause of at least 125 cases of vomiting, diarrhea and other gastrointestinal upsets. A McDonald's official in Copenhagen said the costly suspension was prompted by the company's "fears of losing the confidence of our 100,000 daily customers." Not immediately diagnosed, the incident in Denmark rekindled concerns in Europe about mad-cow disease and a food-borne E. coli outbreak in Scotland last November that killed at least 15 people and sickened hundreds more.

A week resounding with ominous warnings to restaurateurs was capped the day after McDonald's burger embargo in Denmark, when President Clinton gave a radio address calling for $43 million to fund development of a nationwide "early warning system" for food-borne illnesses and implementation of the latest technology to prevent their spread.

In Clinton's unveiling of his budget request, which he submitted to Congress last week, he cited the E. coli-caused deaths of five children -- one from contaminated apple juice last fall and four in 1993 from the notorious out-break linked to undercooked Jack in the Box hamburgers.

Of all the coinciding food-safety episodes last month, the panel presentation at the NRA board meeting in Los Angeles offered the most concrete examples of the risks confronting foodservice organizations and the mitigation strategies being implemented by them.

"Just one incident of food-borne illness can be the most devastating thing that can happen in a restaurant. It can put you out of business," warned panel moderator and organizer John Farquharson, president of the Industry Council on Food Safety and executive emeritus of Aramark Corp.

As if the maintenance of sound restaurant-level handling and sanitation practices were not enough of a challenge for operators, the NRA board was reminded that invisible threats to food safety are sneaking into kitchens on common foodstuffs. Janice Oliver, deputy director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, cautioned board members that "emerging pathogens" are on the rise and resisting detection.