The White House's Food Safety Working Group's public-health-focused approach to food safety signals a new day when it comes to protecting our nation's food supply. By enhancing prevention, strengthening enforcement, and improving response, the Obama administration is taking the needed steps to beef up our ailing system. And after years of neglect and countless recalls, both Congress and the White House are finally reforming and updating our food safety system.
The salmonella scare of 2008 left almost 1500 people across 43 states sick -- with tomatoes first incorrectly suspected as the culprit and jalapeños in Mexico later identified to be the source. Earlier this year, nine people died and thousands were sickened as a result of tainted peanut butter. And most recently, meat from my home state of Colorado was pulled from store shelves. The cavalcade of recalls leads one to ask: What outbreak will be next? More importantly, how can we prevent it?
After each crisis and subsequent recall, it has become glaringly clear that our food safety system is broken. It is a woefully underfunded system designed during the latter half of the 20th century that has failed to adapt to our 21st century marketplace. The Food and Drug Administration and our other food safety agencies require enforceable powers to protect consumers from tainted foods, including the authority to recall, locate, and prevent outbreaks altogether.
Individual companies now have the voluntary responsibility of recalling their own products. While many companies have acted properly and swiftly to recall contaminated goods, the delay between the identification of tainted foods and the company's decision to recall those foods leads to the needless sickness of too many Americans. Many are shocked to learn that the FDA does not have the authority to force a recall. In the recent contaminated peanut butter outbreak, for example, the fact that the company in question suspected its product was tainted and yet refused to act on that knowledge serves as a potent reminder that giving the FDA mandatory recall authority is critical.
To complement mandatory recall authority, the FDA must also have the capacity to trace tainted foods from the field to the fork. During the salmonella outbreak in 2008, for example, officials were eventually able to track the contaminated jalapeños to an individual sector of a specific field in Mexico. In the meantime though, the tomato industry was decimated because it was first suspected to be the cause of contamination. With traceability, we could have quickly identified the specific tainted jalapeños as the offending vegetable and moved to contain the outbreak before it spread across the country. By allowing us to isolate outbreaks and avoid unnecessary recalls of safe foods, the ability to trace foods through every point in the supply chain is a vital component that serves the interests of not only consumers but also businesses looking to protect their bottom lines.
The Obama administration's support for the goals of its working group is a crucial first step. However, statutory changes are also needed to fully reform our food safety system. It is now Congress' turn to act by granting our food safety agencies new authorities that can endure the growing demands of our system. Among these authorities, the FDA must also have increased funding and more inspectors in order for the agency to adequately monitor the process whereby food arrives on our dinner tables each night. By giving the FDA adequate resources and authority to both prevent outbreaks and intervene once they appear, we can support the administration's efforts to reassure the parents of America that the food they feed their children is the product of the safest system in the world.
Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), serving her 7th term as the representative for Colorado's First Congressional District, is vice chairwoman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. This op-ed is cross posted with The Mission Ahead, Roll Call's online policy forum.
there is a government website from Pueblo,CO that indicates all recalled items. it is staggering how much junk is brought in and sold.. I am a 30 yr veteran of the freight industry and never recall something coming in that wasnt inspected or at least the paperwork wasnt reviewed.
Are we so afraid of ethnic backlash that we put our lives at risk eating things that may be contaminated? as it is true few anglos work in the fields. Boy am i glad i am building a greenhouse!!!!
As in so many green issues, we can look to the European model for guidelines. Their standards mandate organic or nearly organic production, and their produce and meats are all traceable to the source.
I'm weary of farmers' markets being touted as manna from heaven. We know exactly as much about how food is produced locally as we do about food produced on the other side of the country. The fact that tomatoes were grown next door does not mean they were grown in a safe manner, and there are absolutely no checks on locally grown produce. The only food we can be sure of is the food we've grown ourselves - and even then, we will have used supplemental city water and it will have absorbed pollutants from the air.
I feel we are fairly safe if we buy "organic" - although that term can be less than meaningful - and we prepare food in our own home from basic ingredients being mindful of hygiene. For me, the joy of eating in a restaurant is a thing of the past - and I don't miss it very much.
How are going to trace things like that? Force everyone in the country to submit reports of food consumption to the government?
Serious concerns have been raised about the as-yet poorly defined but seemingly sweeping powers to be granted to the FDA. These concerns rightly question WHO will be writing the implementation rules and regulations; whether small/organic producers and family farms will be effectively or fairly represented; and whether such rules and regulations will serve to put such small or "non-conventional" producers out of business.
Unless these interests are protected, we shall see further vertical and horizontal consolidation (and centralization ) of food production, which have in fact likely exacerbated instances of contamination. These trends are also putting our nation at increasing risk when it comes to food security.
I challenge Rep. DeGette to resolve these concerns to the satisfaction of the organic and small producers. This is a serious issue that neither you nor your constituents can afford to get wrong.. It would be better to do nothing than to get this one wrong.
Three companies control almost all our food supply.
Monsanto controls almost all the seeds.
It isn't terrorists who threaten us most.
Bank of America
Goldman Sachs
JP Morgan
Morgan Stanley
Citigroup
The green river killer killed 48 people and the entire country was up in arms. Why aren't we angry over the thousands of people killed by the food industry in the past few years? We tax cigarettes because they kill you, why not fast food? Why not charge corporations extra for creating-yes, creating-food that contributes to diabetes, cancer and immediate death. The food industry says "personal responsibility". According to a film called, "Food, Inc." the Monsanto corporation genetically engineered a soybean that is now planted in roughly 90% of the farms in this country. Where is my choice in that?
Of course you are right. However, while there are bad guys in the food industry, just like the rest of our society, by and large the food industry is very much interested in producing safe and wholesome foods. When people get sick, or at worse die or left with debilitating illness, the food industry can be sued and pay damages. They do have a sword of Damocles over their collective heads.
In my experience as a scientist, I have worked with the food industry. The vast majority of people in various food companies were very much interested in making their products safe. Those companies bent over backward when they were found to have a contaminated product. Injuring your customer is not the best idea in the world.
The past 20 years have been a disaster for food regulation. In order to have effective regulation and have a reasonable chance of producing safe foods you need a strong agency with sufficient manpower to enforce and inspect. You also need the WILL to enforce regulation. Congress emasculated the agencies reducing their manpower and ability to inspect. The Bush Administration appointees did little to enforce existing regulations--the market will regulate (sound familiar??).
All regulations must be based on sound science. While many fear a "gestapo" approach, and this has occurred in the past, these negative approaches can be controlled if both government, industry, and scientific entities are all at the table when regulations are proposed.
Don't blame the corporations; they tell us they don't care about us. Blame us, the eaters who demand cheap food more than nutrition and health; who spend our food dollars in super markets on corporate-produced food products rather than going to a farmers market and getting to know and trust the farmers who grow our food.
Forget DeGette's legislation. First adequately fund FDA's existing inspection and enforcement function which has been starved into insignificance. We don't necessarily need a lot of new rules, just adequate funding of existing ones.
Mandatory food traceability from field to table will add significant expense and headache for us small farmers. The effect could be devastating to the very farmers who actually care about the quality of the food they produce. Our customers aren't demanding it; they know they're getting quality. It smells like an idea being promoted by the big corporate farmers to force us out of business and thereby expand their "market share".
This is what happens when the task of writing legislation is passed to the very corporations to be legislated. There is no question that there is a food safety crisis in this country but "reforming and updating our food safety system" is unnecessary and has opened the door to corporate favoritism which will ultimately be more harmful to consumers.
Well-funded government emphasis should be on independent inspection, investigation and research (best practices, etc.). A hierarchy of notification and authority between inspecting agencies, from county to federal, must be established. The bones of a good system are in place; with a few adjustments, it's a good starting point for the necessary changes.
I think both of these writers have little understanding about food production, processing, and distribution in this country. It is not really possible for over 300 million of us to depend solely on "local production" (whatever that may mean). I am guesing that the average family goes through maybe 50 heads of lettuce, maybe several hundred tomatos in a year, year round! Can you produce that amount of food locally, especially in winter? I really doubt that, nor do I have the time and resource to even think of engaging in that kind of food production.
Growing, producing, and distributing food is a business. I don't care if your local farmer wants to grow stuff and sell it, but they do it had better be safe. After all, Salmonella from a local guy or from a peasant farm in Mexico still can kill you, just one is local and the other is foreign.
Suggestion... go buy a couple bushels of tomatoes... make your own salsa, tomato soup, spaghetti and pizza sauce.
It takes just a couple quarts of strawberries to make a batch of jam. Takes less than an hour.
Learn to live seasonally, appreciate the times of harvest and bounty, and preserve it for times when fresh food is out of season.