Regulation of water quality in agriculture | Food safety news

– OPINION –

Editor’s note: This article was first published in The Regulatory Review and is reprinted here with permission.

Foodborne illness caused by contaminated agricultural water is a significant problem. Although Congress has mandated As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) specifically addresses this issue, the agency has struggled to find a sufficient scientific basis to justify certain agricultural water quality standards. The Administrative Law of the United States Supreme Court decisions issued this summer are likely to make matters worse. We need innovative regulatory approaches that would reduce short-term harm while generating the scientific evidence needed to support long-term solutions.

There are repeated outbreaks of foodborne illness warned federal regulators for the presence of harmful microbial pathogens in irrigation water used to grow fresh produce. The problem has become so serious that contaminated fruits and vegetables are now the leading cause of foodborne illness in the United States. According to one estimationSpoiled leafy greens alone cause 2.3 million acute illnesses each year, at an annual economic cost of $5.2 billion.

Because using drinking water to irrigate crops would be prohibitively expensive, farmers are forced to rely on water from rivers, canals and wells, all of which are vulnerable to potential problems. infection by wild animals and livestock. Investigations into several high-profile outbreaks involving leafy greens have identified the escape of manure from nearby livestock feed operations into irrigation canals as a source of contamination.

The problem is not new. As early as 1997, the industry guidelines microbial contamination of agricultural water by livestock identified as a significant hazard to human health. After decades of lobbying by consumer advocacy groups demanding a federal regulatory response, the Food Safety Modernization ActSigned into law by President Barack Obama in 2011, it directed the FDA to establish “science-based minimum standards” for agricultural water quality within two and a half years. However, the agency has struggled to meet this mandate.

From the beginning, the FDA has sought in vain for a scientific basis to justify minimum quantitative standards. After missing the legal deadline, the agency was successful indicted by consumer advocacy groups and eventually published in a Produce safety rule in November 2015. The rule included plans to phase compliance with quantitative agricultural water quality thresholds and testing requirements between 2019 and 2021, depending on farm size. In 2019, the agency postponed initial enforcement of the rule until 2022. Then in 2021, the agency proposed replacing quantitative water quality thresholds and testing requirements with qualitative assessments of preharvest agricultural water quality. Last month, the FDA published a revised final rule on agricultural water.

The new rule does not prescribe minimum water quality standards. Instead, growers are required to conduct an annual crop each year reviews to identify conditions that are “reasonably likely to involve known or reasonably foreseeable hazards.” It also requires them to “determine whether measures are reasonably necessary to reduce the likelihood of contamination” and ensure that agricultural water is “safe and of sufficient quality for its intended use.”

The regulations directly growers’ attention to factors that can influence the microbial quality of agricultural water, such as the location and nature of the water source, method of application, crop characteristics and climatic conditions. If growers determine that their agricultural water is “not safe or of sufficient sanitary quality for its intended use,” then they are required to “make necessary changes and take adequate measures to determine whether the changes were effective.”

Throughout this entire process, the FDA has found itself between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, federal law requires the agency to establish science-based minimum standards for agricultural water. An initial failure to do so subjected the agency to a court order forcing compliance. On the other hand, the agreement among experts is that there is no scientific evidence to support specific quantitative thresholds for agricultural water quality. Scientists have yet to develop reliable methods for measuring the microbial quality of agricultural water or for estimating the transfer rates of pathogens from water to crops and the resulting pathogen exposure of consumers. Moreover, scientists are lacking dose-response data that allows regulators to calculate safe levels of exposure to pathogens.

Although scientific proof that microbial contamination of agricultural water is hazardous to human health is robust and expanding, this scientific evidence is insufficient to reliably quantify the impact of different levels of water quality on the incidence of foodborne illness. Faced with an unsolvable dilemma, the agency has opted for a rule that merely highlights potential sources of contamination and encourages growers to exercise reasonable care.

What else can be done?

Going forward, regulators should prioritize verifiable harm reduction measures that generate new policy-relevant information, which could ultimately support more determined agricultural water quality standards. Recently, for example claims in public health surveillance and outbreak investigation have allowed regulators to identify outbreaks more quickly. Providing consumer warnings and removing contaminated products from store shelves earlier in the life cycle of an outbreak has made this progress reduced the number of victims per outbreak. At the same time, better surveillance and research are producing data that could one day allow regulators to link specific food safety measures on farms to quantifiable public health benefits.

Moreover, regulators must look beyond the farm for solutions. For example, food processors can use post-harvest sanitation to kill pathogens. Although the current practice of washing with chlorinated water has proven itself inadequate to purify contaminated products, technologically innovations The use of radiation, ozone gas, ultraviolet and blue light, and cold plasma can ultimately be a lethal step in the post-harvest production process, cost-effectively neutralizing pathogens.

Regulators should also consider strategies aimed primarily at preventing the contamination of agricultural water from livestock operations. Recent field trials have done just that demonstrated that vaccinating herds dramatically reduces the number of cattle shedding pathogens E.coli and the fecal bacterial concentration of those that do. Other studies have shown this replenish feeding with probiotics or various foods, such as orange peels, cottonseed and seaweed, also reduces the spread of pathogens.

It will not be easy to put these measures into practice. Public health surveillance and outbreak investigations are expensive, and there is no evidence that Congress currently has an appetite for significant new appropriations to fund food safety. Innovative technologies require industry adoption and consumer acceptancewhich takes time. Perhaps most difficult of all are measures aimed at livestock farming. The beef and dairy industries have shown little enthusiasm for additional regulations. They have lobbied effectively in return for legislation that would allow the FDA to test for pathogen outbreaks on farms during investigations, and industry lawyers have successfully pursued legal action challenges efforts to strengthen existing regulations on the discharge of manure into waterways.

Finally, the conservative supermajority of the U.S. Supreme Court has issued a series of administrative law opinions – including the recently decided cases of Runner Bright Enterprises against Raimondo And Ohio v. EPA – which give agency officials less policy discretion and allow federal courts to question the adequacy of the scientific analyzes of agency experts. These decisions threaten to hamper FDA officials as they struggle to fulfill their legal mandate to implement quantitative, science-based agricultural water quality standards.

Unfortunately, agricultural water contamination will likely remain a huge challenge for regulators and a persistent cause of foodborne illness for the foreseeable future.

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