New Study: Why The Food Supply Won't Be Safe Anytime Soon
This is what happens after eight years of starving government, I guess:
While much of the current debate about improving food safety has focused on federal agencies -- the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- the bulk of food safety work is performed by about 3,000 local and state agencies, which handle everything from inspections of restaurants, food processing plants and grocery stores to detecting outbreaks and removing unsafe products from stores.
But those agencies are struggling, and Congress must reengineer the national system, according to an analysis by the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, based on consultations with health experts, consumer groups and food executives nationwide.
"Congress needs to take responsibility for telling the government what its job is," said Michael R. Taylor, an author of the study who teaches at George Washington and is a former top official at the FDA and USDA. The study urges Congress to invest at least $350 million over five years to bolster underfunded state and local agencies and ensure a basic level of food safety in each state.
The analysis describes a fractured collection of food safety professionals all trying to do the same thing -- prevent illness from contaminated food -- but their efforts are hampered by weak coordination, poor communication, varying abilities, inconsistent methods and a lack of federal leadership. The report urges Congress to create a single cohesive food safety network composed of local, state and federal agencies and accountable to the secretary of health and human services.
"We need one food safety system, not 50," said Joseph Corby, executive director of the Association of Food and Drug Officials. "State and local agencies do 2.5 million inspections a year, analyze hundreds of thousands of food samples, and most of this work is not done in a coordinated fashion and not used by the federal agencies."
Communication between state and local officials and federal agencies is often disjointed, the study found. During a recall of a tainted product, for example, the FDA will often obtain from a food processor a distribution list that identifies retailers who received the product, but the agency does not routinely share that information with local or state officials, even though they are responsible for checking store shelves to make sure tainted products have been removed.
Meanwhile, states that interview people who have become sick from food to figure out which products may be suspect often do not share victims' identities with the CDC, citing privacy laws, even if that data would help federal officials better track an outbreak.
had been installed to undermine, sabotage, eviscerate, and otherwise disable any and every USer institution and/or instrument by which the People could resist the imposition of CorpoRat/Fascist hegemony.
Far from being incompetent, they succeeded past the imaginings of any citizen or critic. THe FDA is just another example, along with the EPA, the DoJ, and on and on and on...
It's part of Norquist's bathtub strategy.
people can cling to denial all they want but the true extent of the damage is going to clang them over the head at some point.
Big part of the problem: Distribution.
There is no reason why a head of lettuce grown in Texas should be trucked all the way to California. No reason why grapes need to come from Chile when they are out of season.
It will limit variety, but it will make us healthier. Food should be grown and consumed locally. See the documentary "The Future of Food"
It is scary that people don't have basic horticultural or animal husbandry skills anymore.
a small Hispanic-oriented grocery store on my street, that happens to have better meat and produce than any of the local supermarkets. I'm not entirely sure but think they get their food more directly from the producers than the big stores. Maybe I'm safer shopping with them, too.
I thought exported/imported food from another state doesn't need to go though all the internal tests, I am pretty sure if a state has "junk" food not worthy to sell within state lines they sell it to another state. I guess Texas has substandard lettuce, why they sell it to CA, perfect system huh.
Actually the lettuce was imported from Texas, along with all other produce used by the restaurant chain Sbarro's. They had a central distributor called Lisanti's and they trucked in lettuce and other produce to a facility in Texas, then sent it to all their national stores from that location.
It was done in the name of efficiency and cost control, but it is not a healthy system. Sbarro's is not the only restaurant that does this. That is why if you really want to eat healthy, you need to grow and cook the vast majority of what you consume.
most of us do not know where our food comes from or what goes into growing it and preparing it. This is a fundamental aspect of human existence that has been delegated to someone else and automated.
Bad ju ju.
I used to like Sbarro's, even though I couldn't tell that they were passing on any savings to me.
We Canadians certainly enjoy your fresh produce during our long winters!!!! One can only eat so many mealy apples. Once summer comes, we can buy local, but many still get theirs from the supermarkets.
far left loon >.<
since American pets we're killed by the Pet Food Industry in 07. It get's uglier as the trail led to the human food chain. Either they are intentionally trying to make us sick (or kill us) or they basically just don't give a sh*t anymore in 80% of Big Ag's operations.
It's really BAD.
People have NO IDEA just how bad.
While I love gardening and manage to grow and freeze almost all the vegetables we eat year-round, there's still a lot we have to purchase from grocery stores, meat, fish, dairy, poultry, etc.
I've gardened primarily to have better vegetables on the table, and it isn't exactly a breeze to do, except maybe the harvesting.
But reports like this are very worrisome. Given our economic straits, I'm not sure things are going to get better anytime soon. A safe food supply doesn't seem very high on politicians' list of concerns.
So if you can't grow your own, buy as much as possible from local farmers' markets so you know who the supplier and workers are.
If you buy from the local farmers at the farmer's market, you are supporting your LOCAL economy. I live in northern California where my neighbors who are farmers are struggling to survive. But I have noticed that each year our local farmer's market gets busier and busier. If you have a CSA (http://www.localharvest.org/csa/)in your area, give them your business. We all benefit when our food is grown locally. I'm amazed that the Dept of Homeland Security has not made food producers and food distribution a piece of our security plan.
We're all in this together. Small changes can make a big difference.
Ever notice how irons have a setting for permanent press? I don't get it.
Steven Wright
natural and wholesome foods can be cloned, genetically modified, implanted with an electronic chip or medicated or irradiated into being. Factory farming, excessive use of antibiotics, pesticides, massive slaughter houses and a consolidated non-regional processing system have all converged to create the current food safety nightmare.
and who the worst offenders are, because they always sound so munificent when they underwrite NPR and PBS programming.
I don't even want to know what sh*t-poisons (from china) is in them at this point. Besides Big Medicine is waiting to finish me off at some point anyway why worry be happy.
Climate change is drying up the sugar maples...
Besides The Future of Food, another good documentary is "King Corn" about the corn industry.
A great companion reader to the two is "The Omnivore's Dilemma". I'm currently reading it and it has lots of details about the food supply.
American's don't care about nutrition. It's about gorging and stuffing their faces and stomachs three times a day. Anyway nothing I say matters I don't even know why I bother.
pointing out that Mexican immigrants typically struggle with obesity only after moving to the US, and that cultural diets have much less to do with it than with the quality of food sold here, and the choices we all face between quality and affordability.
I guess anytime a conservative tries to make some point about America having fat poor people, they're showing economic and nutritional ignorance as well as callous disregard for the under-privileged.
Potatoes, rice, pasta and bread are much chepaer than steak and caviar. I see your point.
far left loon >.<
"The report urges Congress to create a single cohesive food safety network composed of local, state and federal agencies and accountable to the secretary of health and human services."
Effing socialists.
The fed govt should do the job the states cannot. This would free up more state revenue and consolidate the inspecting/regulating process.
But our benevolent agribusinesses (who are, ironically, the ultimate GLOBAL socialists) gain by this disarray, so it will not happen.
"Someday somebody related to some of these sufferers, these victims, these collaterally damaged souls, may try to kill you. And I have to tell you, I think you’ll have it coming." - Christopher Cooper
back in the old days! thier was a family owned grocery store on practicaly every other block, the fruit, and vegetables came from mostly family owned farms in the area , chickens , beef products ,pork you name it they sold it and the quality and taste of thoes foods were great! today the farms are corporate owned , the grocery stores corporation owned they pump poisons into thier products for faster growth faster profits, and if thats not bad enough they buy crap from red china to further poison thier products, even your pets are being destroyed by corporation greed, and so we come to growing your own foods and canning them for future use , thats great but is that ground your planting full of chemicals from the manufacturing plants in your area , the falling polutions from power plants that contaminate the same ground ? the water if you must water your gardens because of lack of rain , whats in it? city water useual comes from nearby rivers lakes ect ,that are being polutted by the same poisons thoes factorys spew into the air , the chemicals flushed into the rivers, its hard to believe its really safe to drink, let alone water your gardens with, and canning your fruits and vegetables is not cheap, the jars the lids , the pressure cookes cost plenty , and if you dont know what your doing you take a chance on food poisoning, thiers no easy answer to the food problems your damned if you do ans damned if you try!
The eugenics section of the Republican party has been hard at work destroying the food supply to reduce the population. It's all part of the plan.
As for us, we bought a small farm and are helping to feed our town.
the last Republican to seriously propose health care reform was Nixon?
I'd really hope that's not a conscious motive but it's no longer inconceivable.
"Country of origin United States or China"
Gee, I wonder which?
And they got caught using peanut products from that rat-infested plant.
HR 875 proposes to regulate food safety, but in the end, because of the broad nature of the wording in this proposed legislation, seems to not exclude anybody from definition as a food producer. If anybody producing food can be subjected to the laws in this thing, it is a disaster.
It then becomes an attack on small, organic food producers,home gardeners, and subsistence hunters. Farmers markets come under attack from a federal administration who's head offices can be populated by big agribusiness lobbyists and allies.
If this law only targets large interstate agribusiness, who do need to be regulated, I support it wholeheartedly. But if that is the case it should be explicit as such. IT IS A LAW. Any wiggle room will be exploited by those with the means and motivation to do so.
Shades of Adam Curtis' "The Trap",a brilliant BBC 3hour mini series where he shows how in the name of protecting freedoms and safety, the public ends up losing both. Any story I hear now that shows the weakness in the food supply I now suspect is softening us up for this draconian and cruel legislation, just when we need the opposite.
We need biodiversity, sustainability and self reliance, not brutal penalties for small food producers.
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