Some Take-Aways from ACI's 3rd National Forum on Food-Borne Illness Litigation
American Conference Institute (ACI) recently held its latest conference on food-borne illness litigation. The conference has been a fairly intimate gathering of the nation’s lawyers, insurers and experts involved with food-borne illness litigation.
This year, I had the privilege of moderating an in-house counsel “think tank.” The panel was composed of lawyers from a nice cross-section of food businesses: Yum Brands, Hormel, Fresh Express and SUPERVALU (though for each, food-borne illness litigation is a rare event) A slide-deck from the panel can be found here.
Also among the presenters at this year’s conference were Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Dr. Arthur Liang and USDA/FSIS representative Dr. Dan Engeljohn. Both presentations provided fascinating insight into changes afoot in food safety enforcement and policy at the federal level. Here are some of the take-aways:
• “Outbreaks Waiting to Be Discovered” – Dr. Liang opined that, based on surveilled illnesses, most food-borne illness outbreaks are not presently discovered. He believes that recent data shows that there are perhaps 2-3 times more outbreaks nationally than what’s been uncovered over the last few years.
• Food Safety Progress Being Undone by Retail Deli Operations – FSIS says there has been a “steady increase in risky behavior at the retail level.” According to Dr. Engeljohn, budget authority is being sought to intervene with retailers, particularly smaller supermarket deli operations.
• Negative Tested Product Can Be Considered Adulterated - FSIS will be issuing a policy soon that for the first time will consider a “negative tested product to be determined adulterated” under circumstances where an associated product tested positive for pathogens.
• Non-0157 STECs - FSIS will be finalizing methodology to detect non-0157 Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli (STEC).
Assessing Risks of Chemicals in Foods with Limited Scientific Information
An important study was released this month by the Institute of Food Technologists addressing the challenge of responding to food contamination with limited scientific information. Ricardo Carvajal at Hyman, Phelps & McNamara wrote about this on the FDALawBlog last week. You can read the summary by Rosetta L. Newsome here.
Ms. Newsome summarizes the three main sections of the study as follows:
First Section:
“details the U.S. legal framework that provides the foundation for U.S. food safety policy,
describes international considerations (e.g., Codex standards) that impact foods in international commerce, and addresses European Union law and standards.”
Second Section:
“briefly addresses structure activity relationships, surrogate compounds and metabolites,
predictions based on physical/chemical data, toxicological evaluation, use of animal studies, statistical considerations, and other aspects of risk assessment.”
Third Section:
“addresses why a new approach is needed to conduct a risk-based evaluation of the potential exposure, hazard, and toxicity of low levels of unwanted chemical substances in foods and how information on risk can be used to make appropriately conservative and balanced decisions[;] . . . also calls attention to the importance of evaluating benefits of the food(s) in which the component is found as well as risks.”
ACI Announces 3rd National Forum on Food-Borne Illness Litigation
The American Conference Institute announced this week its latest food litigation conference. Here’s the conference brochure. The conference will take place in Chicago on October 26-27 at the Sutton Place Hotel.
Plaintiffs’ lawyer Bill Marler and defense lawyer Al Maxwell are co-chairing the conference. This year promises a greater variety of presentations by in-house food personnel, government regulators, and others. As in past years, I expect a stimulating exchange of information and vigorous debate about competing views of food liability issues. Feel free to email me or comment if you are attending or want more information.
Registration Still Open For The ACI Food-Borne Illness Litigation Conference in Scottsdale
December 4-5 is the American Conference Institute’s 2nd National Forum on Food-Borne Illness Litigation. The first forum turned out to be a very engaging and diverse forum (e.g. plaintiffs lawyers, industry lawyers, top state and federal officials) on emerging issues in food-borne illness. I will be one of the many speakers. Ralph Weber, an accomplished trial lawyer from Wisconsin, and I will be offering "practical advice for litigating the case, retaining experts, assessing damages and planning a trial strategy." The focus of my presentation will be a discussion of how to develop trial strategy and themes at the earliest possible point, selection of experts and assessment of damages.
I’d urge anybody involved in dealing with risks from food-borne illness think about attending. If you register, mention the promotion code 724L09.S and you’ll get $200 off the conference price. Hope to see you there.
