Nation had better make food safety a high priority again

CITIZEN-TIMES.com
Nation had better make food safety a high priority again

The widespread botulism scare in the news this week illustrates some basic, disturbing facts about the current state of the American food supply.

Put bluntly, it highlights the pitfalls of mass production and mass supply lines. When a problem occurs, it can take on a massive scale.

Combined with the benign neglect, if not outright dismantling, of government agencies designed to oversee food safety, the situation represents a disaster waiting to happen.

The latest food scare involves a Castleberry Food Co. plant in Georgia. Cases of botulism from people who had consumed Hog Dog Chili Sauce Original were reported in Texas and Indiana, and government testing on 16 of 17 cans at a Castleberry warehouse indicated contamination. An array of other products had been produced on the line where the chili was made, prompting a widespread recall of more than 90 products made at the plant.

The scope of the recall is massive, involving production from a plant that cranks out 10,000 cases of foodstuffs containing two dozen cans every day, products that were on shelves of thousands upon thousands of retailers. The director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition said, “You’re talking tens of millions of cans that may have been involved.’’

More and more scares

Problems with food have produced a drumbeat of headlines in recent years. Stories of pet food contamination, E. coli cases related to spinach, green onions linked to a hepatitis A outbreak, contaminated candy, peanut butter containing salmonella and drug-laced fish have all paraded across the news pages.

While many of these scares have involved domestic firms, just as many have involved the increasingly large number of imported food products. Many such products are flagged, but plenty others are undoubtedly getting through, as U.S inspectors have only enough resources to examine barely 1 percent of nearly 9 million shipments of imported food each year.

A quarter of the fruit consumed by Americans is imported, as is more than 80 percent of the seafood we eat. On the domestic side, consolidation has been the new trend. Eighty percent of beef slaughter is handled by just four firms, and two companies make 75 percent of pre-cut salads. Half the food products in the nation are made by 2 percent of the farms.

While all this has produced a stable food supply and helped keep prices down, it also represents the potential for big problems, such as with the Castleberry episode. It also without doubt presents a tempting target for terrorists.

Lack of leadership

Here’s where government can and should play a strong leadership role, but instead is going the other direction. Just last week, Congress blocked a move that would have seen the FDA close seven of its 13 field laboratories.

In response to the food scares, President Bush has established a Cabinet-level team headed by a “food czar’’ tasked to review regulations and procedures regarding food safety and issue recommendations. (We hope the food czar will not simply disappear, as did the ballyhooed “war czar.’’)

The current systems to ensure the safety of our food were created in a different age and are ill-suited to modern challenges.

In May, former FDA chief Dr. David Kessler told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, “Simply put, our food safety system is broken. We have no structure for preventing food-borne illness in this country.’’

Terror threat

This antiquated system is a catchall of 15 agencies, with responsibilities sometimes delegated seemingly at a whim, and few serious powers. (Even this week’s massive recall was a voluntary effort). The protection of our food supply needs to enter the new millennium, because of new production methods, new food sources and new methods of processing. It also needs to enter it because of the threats this millennium offers. Tommy Thompson, as he was leaving the offices of Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2004, said, “I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do.’’

That threat comes on top of the fact 5,000 Americans die from food-borne contamination every year, and an estimated 76 million of us fall ill from such contamination.

It is time for the administration and Congress to develop a sense of urgency about our food supply. The problems promise to become only bigger.

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