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April 6, 2004
On April 7, 2004, a joint press conference will be held at 10 a.m. at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, to announce the release of a second edition primer for physicians and other health care professionals to help them recognize, treat, and report foodborne illnesses. This edition, Diagnosis and Management of Foodborne Illnesses: A Primer for Physicians and Other Health Care Professionals, was created though a partnership of the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Nurses Association (ANA) in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The second edition builds on material presented in the first edition released in 2001 and contains five new sections on emerging foodborne illnesses, written with an emphasis on living in the post 9-11 environment.
The primer will be free to all health care professionals and contains charts, scenarios, and a continuing medical education section. It is also being translated into Spanish. The complete press release announcing the primer is on FDA's website at http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/fpprimer.html.
Printed copies of the primer can be obtained by emailing your name, mailing address, and telephone number, as well as the number of copies requested, to Dr. Eileen Parish () or Howard Seltzer (). The second edition primer will be available online in Adobe PDF format at http://www.ama-assn.org/go/foodborne.
Self-report surveys from States, Territories, Local and Tribal Nations reveal progress in adopting FDA's food code. The latest surveys reveal that New York and Pennsylvania now have retail food codes that are modeled after FDA's food code. However, the most populous state, California, responded to the most recent survey that it does not model its current food code after FDA's food code. Although California had previously responded that its food code was modeled after FDA's, the wording in the most recent survey questions had been modified to help states more clearly determine their responses, and this resulted in California changing its response. California anticipates that its food code will be modeled after FDA's food code by 2006. Hence, approximately 75 percent of the U.S. population now lives in areas where the retail food code it modeled after FDA's food code. The complete quarterly report with progress in food code adoption is on FDA's website at http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~ear/fcadopt.html. Several other states are in the rulemaking process, which will result in more areas with retail food codes modeled after FDA's food code in the coming years.
FDA posts recalls on its website at http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/archive.html. This webpage, titled Recalls, Market Withdrawals and Safety Alerts Archives, includes the most significant product actions, based on the extent of distribution and the degree of health risk. The recalls on the list are mainly Class I, which are recalls due to a situation in which there is a reasonable probability that the use of or exposure to a violative product will cause serious adverse health consequences or death. Recent recalls include some undeclared allergens in food products, as well as excessive Vitamin D levels in a particular dietary supplement.
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Food Safety and Security Staff E-mail: |
Office Number: (301) 436-2277· FAX (301) 436-2605 CFSAN Web site: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/ |
