Food Safety: A Change Is Gonna Come, But How Soon?
At House hearings today, members of the U.S. Congress from both parties declared the need for immediate changes in our food safety oversight systems. Let's hope that partisan bickering won't overwhelm the need to get control of our food supply. Some choice quotes from the New York Times story on the subject:
"We have before us one of the finest messes in history," said Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, who accused both Congress and the White House of allowing the FDA to become incompetent.
“As a result of the failure of giving Food and Drug the resources it needs,” he continued, “people are dying.”
What more is there to say?
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5 Comments:
I think change would come when famous chefs educate themselves on how to change the FDA, and then write an open letter to Obama with a list of acceptable changes.
foodinmouth at 4:05PM on 03/11/09
You know, for someone who's constantly going on about how great local, organic, artisanal, etc food is, you'd think you'd be really worried about this bill. It's basically CPSIA for food. Just like with that bill, the NYT isn't giving the full story. If this bill passes, it'll probably kill a lot of the businesses that create the food you like. I could go on, but the guys over at the lawblog popehat have already done a much better job. Check them out here:
http://www.popehat.com/2009/03/09/you-are-why-i-cannot-eat-good-things/
supagold at 5:38PM on 03/11/09
@ Supagold - nice article (if a bit aggressive). I had no idea the ramifications on small farmers, thanks for the information. I think as a community Serious Eats is in a position to make a meaningful contribution to improving this bill (or at least increasing awareness of its full ramifications) before it gets passed. I would love to see more coverage of it on SE in the future.
Also, having seen some of the data on FDA inspections, the task set out before them verges on impossible. The distinctions of their jurisdiction are highly bureaucratic and piecemeal. For example, the USDA inspects open faced sandwiches (daily) while the FDA has jurisdiction over closed sandwiches (which they only inspect once every five years). The FDA will never be able to inspect even a measurable fraction of the food that flows through our system on a daily basis, but will continue to bear a considerable portion of the blame when things unavoidably go wrong.
The solution lies not in increased oversight to satisfy momentary public outrage, but in a genuine overhaul of the American food system. Without infinite funding (and costs far exceeding the benefits) it would be impossible to check every factory, or even provide a credible threat to do so. Therefore what must change is not the oversight, but the way that Americans eat. If we move our consumption away from large scale production to smaller, more sustainable farming models we could see a real breakthrough in the food safety system in our country. Until then, the market and FDA are doing a fairly good job (ultimately the number of deaths from our food system is really very small) of safely meeting consumer demand for large quantities of variously processed foods. In fact, many more are dying every year from dietary related diseases - heart disease, diabetes etc. - than food poisoning. Maybe we should direct some of those precious government resources to solving that problem instead.
Rocky at 3:05AM on 03/12/09
A good article detailing the food safety system (and its shortcomings) from the GAO:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07449t.pdf
Rocky at 3:10AM on 03/12/09
Definitely agreed with the above comment comparing this horrible legislation with CPSIA. Small farmers *will* *not* *exist* when this comes to pass, and Obama's Big Agriculture friends will have won the day. Very sad for Michelle Obama, who has apparently developed a taste for locally-farmed food.
Also -- Serious Eats, will you please stay out of politics? At least, you know, stick with the politics of Food Network or celebrity chefs or which molecular gastronomy chef is more true to his craft. I read this blog as a solace from the sound and fury of politics.
sbroadway at 11:33AM on 03/12/09