To date, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration believes that the deadly E. coli outbreak that has killed 22 people, 21 of them in Germany, has not affected the U.S. food supply.

That's small consolation.

The virulent strain of E. coli bacteria has infected more than 2,200 people in 12 countries, causing great concern across Europe as the focus turns to raw vegetables.

Initially they thought it was Spanish cucumbers, and now, perhaps, German bean sprouts. The inability to quickly identify and contain the culprit is causing a fair amount of food panic.

The good news is that very little fresh produce comes to this country from Europe, especially now, when seasonable weather means a greater abundance of native crops. And the FDA has stepped up its surveillance of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and raw salads, as well as sprouts and sprout seeds.

An overabundance of caution is a good thing in this case. This rare strain is so strong it has resulted in more than 600 cases of a form of kidney failure called HUS, or hemolytic uremic syndrome. That's more than any other recorded outbreak worldwide, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

E. coli is serious and deadly business and this European outbreak underscores the importance of the FDA's Food Safety Modernization Act that was signed into law by President Obama this past January. It shifted the focus of federal regulators from responding to contamination to preventing it.

One new rule effective this July will allow the FDA to administratively detain food the agency believes has been produced under insanitary or unsafe conditions. In the past, the agency could only detain products when it had credible evidence that they were contaminated or mislabeled in a way that presented a threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals.

The new, tougher teeth for the FDA is no guarantee, but it is another tool in fighting virulent outbreaks such as the one causing havoc in Europe.