Food Safety in the US: We're on Red Alert

The United States once had one of the safest food systems in the
world, but now, 70 million Americans are sickened, 300,000 are
hospitalized, and 5,000 die from food-borne illness every
year. It is a sad fact: since 9/11, far more Americans have been
killed, injured or hurt because of our lack of a coordinated food safety
system than by terrorist acts that challenge our Homeland Security
system.

The culprits in this assault on American wellbeing aren't shadowy
terrorist figures, but rather, they are what most consumers would
identify as wholesome -- not harmful -- foods. Peanuts, lettuce,
pistachios, spinach, hamburgers sold to Boy Scout camps, peppers,
tomatoes, and pepper-coated sausages are among the foods that have
sickened and killed Americans in just the last few years. Our children
are most at risk from these food threats, with half of all food-borne
illness striking children under 15 years old.

The Bush administration constantly claimed it was protecting
Americans from potential security threats, yet it completely failed to
protect the public from the clear and present danger of deadly food.
Due in part to that administration's cuts in funding and staff, the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) currently inspects less than 25% of all
food facilities in the U.S. More than 50% of all American food
facilities have gone uninspected for five years or more.
During President Bush's last term, regulatory actions against those
companies selling contaminated food to Americans declined by over a half
(Office of the Inspector General: FDA's Food Facility Registry.
Report: OEI-02-08-00060, December 2009).

The result is tragically predictable. Large processing facilities, which
now mix foods from across the country and the world, are not being
inspected. Illnesses caused by contaminated foods, which could be
prevented with proper government oversight, are instead causing the
hospitalization of hundreds of thousands and the deaths of thousands of
Americans. Again, the victims are, disproportionately, our children.

The tens of millions of victims of food-borne illness represent only
one segment of the casualties from our failure to require safe and
nutritious food. Because of lax regulation of agricultural chemicals,
many of the fruits and vegetables that should bring us health and
nutrition are instead laced with dangerous pesticides, dozens of which
are known carcinogens. Much of the food marketed to our children and
served in their schools are confections brimming with trans-fats and
high-fructose corn syrup; these contribute mightily to the epidemic of
obesity in the young and heart disease and diabetes in our older
populations. Under pressure from agribusiness, our federal agencies and
legislators continue to commercialize genetically modified foods with
no safety testing and no labeling for consumers. And, despite the
strong potential of health hazards, food made with new,
nanotechnology-based chemicals are getting waived through to the market,
without any independent testing at all.

Clearly our food safety system is broken and needs a complete
overhaul. With the continuing string of food contamination scandals,
even Congress has begun to pay attention. The Food Safety Enhancement
Act (HR 2749) was passed by the House of Representatives in the summer
of 2008 and takes some steps in the right direction. It gives more
authority to the FDA, restoring some of its power to conduct food
inspections and strengthen oversight.

However, it's far from perfect. Bowing to pressure from
agribusiness, lawmakers have exempted livestock producers and any other
entity regulated by the USDA from the new regulations of both this act
and its Senate companion, the Food Safety Modernization Act (S.510). In
fact, members of Congress were so committed to the interests of big
industrial meat producers that they also prohibited the FDA from
"impeding, minimizing, or affecting" USDA authority on meat, poultry,
and eggs. As a result, these bills contain the stupefying provision
that no attempt by the FDA to combat E. coli and Salmonella will be
allowed. These bacteria are the most common causes of deadly food-borne
illness and are found in products contaminated with animal feces.
Since January 2010, over 850,000 pounds of beef -- mostly from
industrial feed lots -- has been recalled due to E. coli O157:H7
contamination. The members of Congress have essentially protected the
interests of corporations who are bad actors, while condemning the
public to continued sickness from these contaminants.

Another major problem with both bills is that they begin with the
flawed premise that all producers and processors of food -- whether
massive corporate farms or small family farms -- are equally at fault
for our broken food safety system. New food safety legislation should
target the largest causes of food-borne illness. These include
concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), water and field
contamination due to manure lagoon leakage, and industrial processing
systems, not small farms.

The "one size fits all" regulatory approach in these bills fails to
take this disparity into account. It instead places an undue and
unsupportable burden on family farms, small processors, and direct
marketers of organic and locally grown food. These have not been
contributors to the contamination events which have caused major
food-borne illness outbreaks, a fact that was acknowledged by FDA Deputy
Director Michael R. Taylor at a July 2009 House Oversight Subcommittee
on Domestic Policy hearing on Ready-to-Eat Vegetables and Leafy Green
Agreements.

It is unconscionable that factory farms would get a pass under the
proposed legislation while family farmers, who often struggle to stay in
operation, are held to stringent, unnecessary and potentially
bankrupting requirements. Small operators would bear the brunt of large
fees that generate the revenue sufficient for the overall food safety
program to operate. Food safety regulation at the farm and processing
level must be appropriate to scale and level of risk.

Fortunately, some Senators are addressing the gaps in their bill.
Perhaps the most critical action so far is that of Sen. Tester (D-MT),
who has introduced an amendment to exempt small-scale and direct
marketing farmers and processors, who are already well regulated by
local authorities.

However, most problematic is that the legislation in its current
state perpetuates the regulatory tangle that is our food safety system.
Arcane mixes of regulatory authority between the FDA, USDA and EPA make
for dangerously inefficient government. It is long overdue that we
establish a separate and effective government agency dedicated to food
safety. We need to separate out the 'Food' part of the Food and Drug
Administration and consolidate all authority under a new Food Safety
Agency.

We did this for Homeland Security; we should also do it for food
security. After all, it is the lack of food safety in this country that
is the far more imminent threat to all of us, our families and,
especially, our children.