Families, health advocates urge Obama to act on food safety

(Reuters) - Families, public health advocates and consumer groups called on the White House on Tuesday to implement delayed provisions in a food safety law they say would help prevent some of the nearly 3,000 deaths caused by food-borne illnesses each year.

Families of victims who have died from food-borne illnesses and consumer and health organizations wrote a letter to President Barack Obama calling on him push forward provisions of a food safety law signed last year that would regulate food imports, produce and packaged food against possible contamination.

The Food Safety Modernization Act was the first food safety overhaul in over 70 years, and without the implementation of these provisions most of the U.S. food system continues to operate under what public health advocates say are outdated laws.

These rules would help prevent food-borne outbreaks such as one last year when listeria-contaminated cantaloupe killed over 30 people, said Erik Olson, director for food programs at the Pew Health Group.

"With our current food system it only takes one part of that food system to contaminate a huge amount of food," Olson said. "We're concerned that the longer these rules take to get out we're just going to continue having these kinds of outbreaks."

The rules have remained at the White House's Office of Management and Budget since late 2011 when the Food and Drug Administration submitted proposed versions of the rules. The OMB is tasked with reviewing and releasing the rules to continue the rule-making process.

Over the past year the United States has had 10 cases of food-borne diseases where multiple states were affected and as many as 390 cases were reported in one outbreak, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aggregated by the Pew Health Group.

These outbreaks were from salmonella, E. coli and listeria in food like ground tuna, imported papaya and pine nuts.

The CDC estimates that about 3,000 deaths are caused by food-borne illnesses and about 48 million people, or one in six Americans, gets sick from food contamination every year. Because of underreporting, the number of sicknesses caused by contaminated food is greatly understated, Olson said.

The rules would establish standards for possible sources of contamination of fresh fruits and vegetables, and make importers responsible for the safety of food they import.

It would also force food companies to identify possible causes of contamination and specify actions to prevent them.

(This story is corrected in first paragraph to say the law is said to help prevent some of the deaths from food-borne illnesses, not all)

(Reporting by Lily Kuo; Editing by Eric Beech)

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Viridian Health Management Provides Best Practices to Integrate Safety and Health Promotion, Reduce Health-Care Costs ...

Fri, Jun 8, 2012, 8:04 AM EDT - U.S. Markets open in 1 hr 26 mins

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Nestle Health Science Launches Next Generation Enteral Safety Technology

FLORHAM PARK, N.J., Jan. 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --  Nestle Health Science will unveil its pediatric closed system formulas with the new SpikeRight® PLUS port at the annual American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition's (A.S.P.E.N.) Clinical Nutrition Week meeting being held in Orlando January 21-24. The introduction marks a significant step in supporting the provision of safe enteral (tube) feeding.

To view the multimedia assets associated with this release, please click: http://www.multivu.com/mnr/53580-nestle-health-science-launches-next-generation-spikeright-plus-pediatrics

Enteral tubing misconnections, where feeding solutions are wrongly administered through intravenous (IV) tubing or other non-enteral systems, have been a concern for nearly thirty years. Most commonly occurring in intensive care settings, where patients have multiple types of tubing connections, an enteral tubing misconnection can result in catastrophic complications and possibly death.

To help address this issue, Nestle Health Science introduced its original SpikeRight® design in the U.S. in 2008. The company's unique design reduces the risk of proximal end (the end closest to the nutrition container) tubing misconnections. Now the next-generation design, the SpikeRight® PLUS enteral connection system, helps to further reduce the risk of tubing misconnections through its PLUS (+) shape which is specifically designed to be incompatible with IV tubing sets, IV solution bags, and other types of non-enteral connectors.  Click here to view a brief video about SpikeRight® PLUS and its unique design benefits for patients.

"Misconnections remain a serious risk to patients, despite the best intentions of healthcare professionals and hospitals, unless we engineer a system with safety stops," said Debora Simmons, PhD RN CCNS, Executive Operations Director at University of Texas School of Biomedical Informatics. "The SpikeRight® PLUS design is a welcomed and important safety advance in improving the quality of care for all patients."

Currently, the SpikeRight® PLUS system is available for pediatric tube feeding products. Additional Nestle Health Science products with the SpikeRight® PLUS port will be available in North America in the coming months.

The issue of tubing misconnections is a global concern. Currently, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is working together with government and industry representatives, including Nestle Health Science, to bring a global standard for enteral nutrition connections to the marketplace. The SpikeRight® PLUS design has been proposed as the sole industry standard for the proximal end and will undergo additional usability testing this month. A final standard is expected by 2014.

"We are extremely proud to have the new SpikeRight® PLUS system available for our pediatric patients," said David Yates, North American Region Head for the company's Nestle HealthCare Nutrition business. "As a leader in safety innovation, we are committed to offering the latest technology and look forward to working with industry partners, hospitals and other healthcare facilities to help ensure the safety of their patients."

Since the initial U.S. introduction of the SpikeRight® system in 2008, Nestle Health Science has made available the design to other manufacturers royalty free and will continue to do so with the SpikeRight® PLUS design. The company has also championed patient safety through education and three hospital-based safety campaigns done in partnership with A.S.P.E.N. The initial campaign, Be A.L.E.R.T., was introduced in 2009 and featured a bedside poster to remind healthcare professionals about the necessary steps to take for safe enteral feeding. The next two campaigns expanded this safety effort to include safe enteral medication delivery (Be A.W.A.R.E., 2010) and specific patient populations such as pediatrics (Be R.E.A.D.Y., 2011), with more than 60,000 posters distributed to hospitals nationwide.

To learn more about the availability of other products in the SpikeRight® PLUS system or find more information on the BE A.L.E.R.T., BE A.W.A.R.E. and BE R.E.A.D.Y. campaigns, visit www.nestlenutrition.com/us. Additionally, an interactive learning experience on the risk of tubing misconnections is available during Clinical Nutrition Week at the Nestle Health Science Enteral Safety Simulation Lab (booth 809).

About Nestle Health Science
Nestle Health Science, through its Nestle HealthCare Nutrition business, offers nutritional solutions for people with specific dietary needs related to illnesses, disease states or the special challenges of different life stages. Nestle Health Science, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nestle S.A., became operational on January 1, 2011 and has worldwide headquarters in Lutry, Switzerland.

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