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THE OPPOSITE OF SAFETY
by Tom Laskawy
It's been a bad week for food safety. First, it was the peanut butter, then it was the High Fructose Corn Syrup and now it's deadly antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria (aka MRSA) in CAFO pigs (and their minders). And of course, as Bill Marler - litigious scourge of the food industry - reminds us, we're continuing to lose the fight against E. coli.
Much has been written about the efforts to track down the sources of contamination. And invariably the companies involved quickly close the their doors (which is how we lost one of the largest ground beef distributors in the country virtually overnight and why the Peanut Corporation of America is no more). But what's truly worrisome is that in each case, the USDA and the FDA (who have joint responsibility for food safety) had information at hand about all of these problems.
In the case of the peanut butter outbreak, the plant in question had a long-documented history of health violations - discovered, not by the FDA, but by local Georgia authorities to whom the FDA had contracted out inspection services. In essence, short of allowing self-regulation, the FDA managed to find an entity that enjoys even cozier relationships with industry than the FDA itself has. In theory, the Georgia Agriculture Department should have forwarded on reports of violations to federal officials. There's no word yet on where in the lines of communication the breakdown occurred.
Meanwhile, the HFCS situation would be comical if not for the fact that mercury is, like, a poison. And, according to a report in Environmental Health (pdf, abstract), it might be in that Coke you're drinking right now. As Tom Philpott dryly points out, despite the fact that HFCS processing requires a witch's chemist's brew of industrial solvents and genetically engineered enzymes, the FDA still considers it a "natural" ingredient. As for the source of the mercury, two of the chemicals used in HFCS manufacturing, caustic soda (aka lye) and hydrochloric acid, are still commonly harvested as byproducts from the industrial chlorine manufacturing process. That process involves forcing mercury through seawater - and now it appears some of the mercury is passed on all the way through to HFCS. The research exposing all this states unequivocally that this discovery represents a "significant additional source of mercury" exposure. But, hey, mercury is natural, too!
And who was the brave investigator toiling in obscurity who uncovered all this? None other than a former FDA scientist who performed the mercury tests way back in 2005 while she was working at the FDA. Oddly, the FDA showed no interest in investigating at the time and it was only after she left the agency that she was able to finalize the research and conclusively demonstrate that mercury contamination in HFCS is a real threat. Another case of food contamination, another potential cover-up.
Finally, we get to the pork problem. This one goes back at least to last spring when a researcher released preliminary results suggesting pigs in CAFOs were contaminated with MRSA. At the time, the FDA issued assurances that there was no evidence that pork sold for retail from any source was infected with MRSA. They could say this with great confidence and no cover-up potential whatsoever. Because, of course, the FDA has never tested for it. And surely, now that the study has been released, they'll start testing? Sadly, no.
If this research is borne out, by the way, it represents a significant threat to public health and safety. MRSA is one of those superbugs that the folks at the CDC lose sleep over. If CAFOs harbor MRSA in any significant numbers, the whole industry, which relies on routine doses of antibiotics to keep animals healthy, faces a serious crisis (which some of us think is a good thing). The FDA, naturally, has repeatedly ruled the practice safe, despite objections from public health officials.
It's understandable then, that USDA chief Tom Vilsack is less concerned with creating whole new regulatory structures for food safety and more concerned with making the ones that we have actually work. But continuing to mix boosterism and regulation - as many of our federal agencies including the FDA and the USDA do - will inevitably lead to these kind of breakdowns. And though you can come up with laundry list after laundry list of changes to penalties, enforcement, inspections and agencies that would improve matters, the frequency and seriousness of each outbreak suggests good intentioned reform may not be enough.
That the output of one contaminated peanut processing plant could require the recall of hundreds of varied and unrelated products and could kill 8 and sicken over 400 in more than 40 states across the country suggests we may have reached the limits of consolidation in the food industry. You'd think that such centralization of food production would make regulation easier. Indeed, the ease of regulation, along with low cost, was one of the prime alleged advantages of consolidation. But we're seeing not just production failures, but the wholesale failure of the regulatory structures themselves. Well, food is cheap anyway.
COMMENTS (12)
better to eat all foods that are organic or from countries where there is more transparency regarding contents.
we just cant trust that any part of our food, or its oversight is safe here anymore.
after reading about the mercury in high fructose corn syrup, the staph bacteria in pigs and the salmonella in peanut butter, who even has an appetite? like eating poison.
yuck.
what are the chances that oversight is going to improve on our food supply?
Posted by: jacqueline | January 28, 2009 3:32 PM
Thanks for the "shout out." The wheels on the food safety bus have fallen off.
Posted by: Bill Marler | January 28, 2009 3:47 PM
jacqueline, don't trust organic, either. Check out your local farmers' market first, and even then do your research about the vendors there.
It's a scary time to be eating.
Posted by: NCProsecutor | January 28, 2009 3:54 PM
You will find that the United States was warned about MRSA st398 (piggy MRSA) spreading in pig herds and pig farmers by the Dutch for at least the last five years.
It is probably linked to the spread of circovirus (PMWS) and desperate attempts to handle the consequences with over-use of antibiotics.
Britain did the same. They have been hiding up or underplaying a PMWS epidemic for a decade....and they haven't released the results of testing pigs for MRSA at all
--
Regards
Pat Gardiner
Release the results of testing British pigs for MRSA and C.Diff now!
www.go-self-sufficient.com and http://animal-epidemics.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Pat Gardiner | January 28, 2009 4:04 PM
I'm of two minds; some attention to the food safety details would be a good thing.
Here's what has happened in the past, every time.
1) There's some legitimate safety issue with mass-produced food.
2) There's a massive outcry, growing less and less informed as it goes along. (For example, e. coli is MOSTLY a marker for fecal contamination, not a problem in itself; all healthy humans have it in their body already.)
3) Some regulation to correct the problem is proposed; it burdens smaller producers much more than larger producers, or is unreasonable when applied to small producers, or cannot be complied with by producers below a certain size.
4) More of the food supply is mass-produced.
Posted by: SamChevre | January 28, 2009 4:39 PM
@NCProsecutor: Are you saying that we should beef-up the FDA (ha ha) and then go back to factory processing? Aren't large, centralized facilities the most efficient forum for active food safety inspectors to operate?
Posted by: CTBanker | January 28, 2009 5:03 PM
Would like to point out that calling Marler a "scourge" is the wrong adjective, and somewhat disdains the vast amount of good he's done for food safety in the US and internationally. The man is a tireless champion of food safety, and also runs a non-profit org to help other countries the US imports from get their *shizzit* together. He should be the USDA's new Food Safety and Inspection Service undersecretary. Unfortunately, we may be in for more of the same Big Ag bum-licking/look-the-other- way nonsense that's led to three contamination "scandals" in a single week: Lobbyist Barbara J. Masters is being considered to head FSIS. Her DC law firm is pathbreaking primarily for the number of food safety standards they've demolished in the last 25 years. http://tinyurl.com/c6lozj
And as for the peanutbutter contamination being the event that points to the need for vast change...we've had plenty of huge outbreaks in the last decade, with thousands of products costing billions of dollars and many lives, and little has happened. Just to give perspective, for every tracked, culture-positive stool sample that's somehow managed to be acquired by public health officials, the CDC estimates that there are 35-50 more people who have been made ill, who never have their "cases" officially recorded. That's 17,000-24,000 sickened just by peanut butter in the current event. And because FDA has also sat on reports that showed the Georgia plant has been contaminated since this summer, bodies will have to be exhumed across the country to get an accurate death count; the peanut butter in question was typically used in institutional settings such as hospitals and rest homes, and thus cause of death was ascribed to something else.
If the USDA and FSIS *did* perform even half of their actual mandate, food safety would be far better than it is today...
The US is currently enslaved to consolidation in the food industry because we have millions of people to feed, and there's no good alternative at the moment, thanks to policies that discourage (bankrupt) small and family farmers. and as one of the NCProsecutor points out, just because you're small, doesn't mean you can't poison....
Posted by: obamafoodorama | January 28, 2009 5:36 PM
Wow, this is crazy stuff. People need to go to jail. Bush admin officials just felt they could get away with anything. Luckily, they were not very good at paying attention. So, studies would be made (i.e. mrsa found in pigs) by the civil service, but then the report would just be sat on by the management.
Why hasn't this been bigger news?
Posted by: Patrick | January 28, 2009 6:07 PM
Meanwhile, the HFCS situation would be comical if not for the fact that mercury is, like, a poison.
I agree. Why does the American Prospect accept ads from pro-mercury astroturfers?
Posted by: Raphael | January 28, 2009 6:08 PM
The poultry industry also has been shown to help transmit antibiotic-resistant bacteria into the public sphere. A peer-reviewed study in Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) showed that poultry workers could bring drug-resistant E. coli home from work -- often in their work clothes, which they washed at home (this seems like a terrible practice for both worker and company -- not only does it bring germs home, but it might transfer germs from humans to the chickens).
Posted by: Marc | January 29, 2009 2:48 PM
All I did when I read this piece was shrug my shoulders. Where am I supposed to find so-called 'alternative'-ly grown food at reasonable prices in the middle of a city (I make $12 per hour on the west coast, in a city that requires a higher wage than that to be comfortable)?
So I die a bit earlier. There's enough pollutants, irritants, and just carcinogens generally for me to just not care anymore. What's one more?
(Pauses to sip Cherry Coke)
On a side note, please don't assume everyone knows the acronyms that you know; that's how you shut out potential readers. I assume CAFO is something like 'Corporate Animal Farming Operation' or the like, but it's a bit off-putting to see it with no explanation.
Posted by: Alaric | January 29, 2009 11:38 PM
I have tried to keep that to a minimum. I figured CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) was fair game since Ezra has written about them so much. But you're right. Meanwhile, check this article out on how to economize and eat well. And here's something I wrote on which foods are best bought organic and which foods you can buy conventional. Also, if you're out West, your best bet for affordable good produce is at weekend farmers markets...
Posted by: Tom Laskawy | January 30, 2009 3:12 PM