By MARCIA MOXAM COMRIE

Safety in the food the nation eats begins in Jamaica.

In 1999, the FDA opened its offices on Liberty Ave. adjacent to York College and since, it has been hard at work in helping the country’s consumers and reaching out to Southeast Queens.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, they are "involved in virtually every important health issue in America – everything from conquering AIDS to ensuring the safety of our daily meals" and self-described as "the nation’s foremost consumer protection agency," everything from the food we eat, to the medicines we take, to the cosmetics we use and the microwave ovens we cook with, fall under the jurisdiction of the FDA.

The FDA is charged with making sure that all of these products are accurately
labeled with the information that consumers need to use them properly.

Investigators and inspectors from the FDA visit more than 15,000 inspection sites per year, to check for truth in labeling. As part of their inspections, they collect nearly 80,000 samples of products from around the world to be scientifically examined.

According to the FDA, if a company is found violating any of the laws it enforces, they can encourage them to either correct the problem or recall a product from the market.

The offices of the Food and Drug Administration are located in the shadow of Jamaica’s York College. PRESS Photo by Ira Cohen

When a company can’t or wont correct a public health problem the FDA can go to court to stop the sale of the product and have already produced items destroyed.

Approximately 3,000 products a year are found to be unfit for consumers and are withdrawn from the market.

The evidence the FDA needs to back up legal cases is prepared by scientists, chemists and microbiologists. The safety of the nation’s blood supply is also an FDA responsibility, with inspectors routinely examining blood bank operations from record keeping to testing for contaminants.

According to Eugenia Katsoudas, a bio-scientist at the Jamaica FDA building, grains, fruits and vegetables are tested at the Jamaica site. The agency does extensive testing on imported products and foods for pesticides and other chemicals.

"A certain amount of pesticide is to be expected, said Katsoudas because farmers have to grow food in bulk in order to produce enough to make money.

If a majority of nation’s food supply were grown organically, experts estimate that you’d be paying $4 per pound for tomatoes and even more for broccoli.

"But we test for extreme amounts," she said.

Remarkably, Katsoudas also said that only about 5 percent of incoming products are tested due to the time and manpower involved.

We mostly test products coming from countries where there are known problems," she explained.

Testing is also done in Jamaica on products that have caused someone to get sick.

"Anything bottled or processed and goes state to state, gets tested, said Dilcia Granville, public affairs specialist at the Jamaica FDA building.

"If you make a cake for your neighborhood we don’t get involved but if you’re taking it across state lines then we get involved," she said.

Representatives from the FDA assist to educate farmers on safe farming methods both in the US and abroad.

But the FDA is not all about food, drink and medication testing in their futuristic labs.

All manufacturing establishments get tested, according to Granville.

Even the Coca Cola Plant is inspected and if there are irregularities in procedures in any manufacturing facility then samples are taken back to the lab for testing, she said.

Agents also do spot checks at blood banks to ensure that the nation’s blood supply is safe.

Medical supplies and devices such as pacemakers are also tested at another FDA site and procedures such as laser eye surgeries are also monitored.

The FDA is also in the throes of designing, with Dr. Charles Kidd at York College, a Masters program in Bio- Engineering, which will allow students to take advantage of the building’s state-of-the-art facility.

Younger students are also part of the agency’s strategy to make its presence known in the community. They offer tours to teenaged students and conduct step by step testing in the lab for them to see the procedure. It is all done in an effort to get them interested in the sciences.

"We’re reaching out to the community in many ways," said Granville.

"We’re going to all the libraries and offering workshops on women’s health issues and AIDS," she said.

The FDA also participated in last summer’s annual JAMS festival and representatives from the agency’s public affairs office can also be seen at various events throughout the community, Glanville explained.

According to Granville, not everything they do involves test tubes and droppers.

Through their outreach program, the FDA promotes awareness through efforts like "Train the Trainer" (TTT) where Head Start and other pre-school programs learn the finer points of hand-washing.

The TTT effort also includes printed and videotaped information in various languages aimed at protecting the consumer from food borne illnesses.

"We do all kinds of different things in the community," said Granville. "We even have a ‘safe food festival’ where all the food is prepared in a food-safe environment. We also have a ‘mamo-mobile,’ which is set up to do breast cancer screening. We have health professionals who teach women how to do breast self-examination and we also do mammograms right there."

President Bill Clinton has also proposed a $43-million Food Safety Initiative "designed to reduce the incidence of food-borne illness by strengthening and improving food safety practices and polices."

The Clinton proposal would include consumer education, food service workers and the general "food community."

There is also an "enhanced food safety inspection and monitoring effort" and "faster testing techniques" built into the proposal.

The agency, according to Granville, works with other agencies to ensure that products cannot be released until testing has been conducted.