I feel like I should probably offer a comment on the giant salmonella'd tomato recall going on given that I just recently wrote a piece for the Center for American Progress on the inability of the fractured federal food safety system to actually ensure the safety of the food supply. Um, told ya? But it seems to me that as I spent a good deal of time talking to the former head of the FDA about this very sort of thing happening, I'll leave it to him:
"When we had the spinach episode, everyone acted like it was a great surprise," former FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford, a Bush-appointee and long-time federal food safety official, told Science Progress. "But the likelihood of something bad happening [with the food supply] is always quite high."
Listen to the man. He spent decades working at the highest levels of food safety. The every-now-and-then food outbreak isn't really more of a feature than a bug, isn't it, when we have more than a dozen (!) federal agencies with a finger in the oversight of which, one of which (USDA) has the food industry in its driver's seat and another (FDA) that screams up and down the halls of the Capitol Building that they don't have enough money to do their job. The only element of surprise here is that we're shocked each and every time our 'matoes make us sick. (Photo thx Ian S)
Over on the Center for American Progress's Science Progress, I have a new story up on the mismatch between the U.S. food safety system that grew out of the response to The Jungle's gruesome depiction of Chicago's meatpacking plants ("...the meat would be moldy and white, stinking and full of maggots.") more than a century ago and the globalized way we eat today, where a fast-food hamburger can contain the beef from a hundred cows and ingredients from around the world. As things stand today, more than a dozen inside-the-Beltway agencies, offices, and bodies with widely different ideas about food safety have jurisdiction over the American food supply.
In the article, titled "Our Fractured Food Safety System," I cover a proposal now pending in Congress to unify food oversight under the roof of a single public health agency, which is the way the EU is trending. I hope you might have a look at the piece. I guess if you have a weak stomach, you might want to wait until after your next meal.
