Food Safety's Dirty Little Secret, Increasingly, the government is leaving the job in private hands

[DogPoundPup]

Source: U.S. News and World Report

From the first reports of a salmonella outbreak this spring, it took a full 89 days before jalapeño and serrano peppers correctly came under suspicion as the culprit. During that period, as more than 1,440 victims trickled in to hospitals, federal officials struggled to trace the source of the outbreak, erroneously singling out tomatoes for weeks before homing in on peppers. No sooner had that outbreak tapered off than the high-end Whole Foods Market was forced to launch a massive recall of E. coli-infested ground beef.

The incidents prompted renewed calls for reform and stricter oversight of food safety. Some lawmakers are even suggesting stripping the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture of their inspection duties and giving them to a new agency. Yet the FDA in particular has long been starved of funding and understaffed. Its workload, meanwhile, is rapidly expanding as the global food chain grows larger, more complicated, and less transparent, all of which adds to the agency's already overcrowded plate.

Congress is under pressure to take up major food-safety legislation this fall that would offer sweeping proposals for regulatory change. The country's appetite for reform, however, is likely to collide with an uncomfortable reality: The responsibility for food safety, as it works today, lies heavily in private hands. Even as bacterial outbreaks have become more high-profile and the financial fallout from recalls more severe, the government has been handing off many food-safety responsibilities to industry. Food safety today is a business—and a booming one at that.

For most Americans, however, the FDA is still the public face of food safety. It was created in 1906 amid the fervid response to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which exposed unsanitary conditions in meatpacking factories. Today, the duties are split. The USDA handles meat, and the FDA takes care of pretty much everything else. But in reality, oversight of farms and food plants has gradually changed hands. A pivotal moment came in the mid-1990s, after 21 people in Connecticut and Illinois were hospitalized during a huge lettuce-related outbreak of E. coli that was ultimately tied back to a grower in California. In response to this and other incidents, federal officials worked with academics and industry to come up with a set of voluntary guidelines to avoid future outbreaks.

Read more: http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/09/10/food-safetys-dirty-little-secret.html?s_cid=et-0910

[valerief]

1. I wish we had a food safety agency. I'll bet civilized countries have one.

[Stellabella]

2. Yep. There used to be lead in butter to make it yellow.

Chalk in milk, and arsenic in meat to cover up rotting.

That's what the 'free market' does, and it's why the FDA was created in the first place.

Fucking repukes. They have killed so many people, through lax enforcement of laws, gutting regulatory agencies, and privitizing oversight.

[farmboxer]

3. Mad Cow Disease

need I say more?

[pipoman]

4. Food borne illness

has been with us since humans began eating. There is now and has always been inherent danger in eating. That said, enhanced distribution and high volume distributors/processors combined with increased publicity of incidents have made it more visible. Want nearly risk free food? Heat everything you eat to 165 degrees...it would make for an interesting lettuce salad for sure.

[LanternWaste]

5. it seems people always scream "nanny state!!11!!" until

It seems many people always scream "nanny state interfering in my right to purchase whatever the hell I want!!11!!" until something like this arises, and then those very same individuals indignantly screech, "what the hell is the government thinking?"

[Overseas]

6. Stop the rampant privatization. Safety for profit ?

I thought the food inspection was becoming more lax under the Bush regime. Thought that was just achieved through budget cutbacks-- less inspectors.

But here too we have Republican buddy capitalism at work. Privatize government services and give the jobs to your pals and who cares if quality slips badly. You and your pals get rich !!