Commentary—

Real Opportunity For Food Safety

By Jonathan Cantu

Spinach. Lettuce. Jalapeño and Serrano peppers. Common agricultural products have been severely tainted in recent years, leading to concerns about food-borne illness. And rightfully so. These outbreaks caused multiple deaths and more than a thousand illnesses nationwide. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now estimates 76 million annual cases of food-borne illness, resulting in more than 350,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths.

With massive product recalls seemingly constant, coupled with rising public worry over Chinese and other foreign food imports, one would think that the federal government would have prioritized fixing its food system. Now, however, comes the peanut scare. In one of the largest food product recalls ever, peanut-laced items have been snatched from the shelves due to salmonella contamination that has killed at least nine Americans. Recent reports show that the culpable company, Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), knowingly sent out salmonella-tainted product to other food processors at least 12 times since 2007. Even worse is that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according to current rules, had to gain permission from PCA to initiate the recall.

Our food safety regulations obviously are in need of a severe upgrade. But that alone is a reactive measure to a systemic problem of continual outbreaks. We need to approach food safety differently. A new presidential administration brings a tremendous opportunity to reject the status quo. Many actions can help, including installing new leaders at the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and FDA, reinstituting regulatory initiatives ignored by the Bush administration, and reestablishing the White House Food Safety Council. But it is paramount, and long overdue, for the federal government to create a solitary, national Food Safety Agency that oversees all food products.

The current division of food regulatory responsibility between the USDA and FDA is scientifically and organizationally irrational and indefensible. The USDA is tasked with overseeing meat and poultry products, and related products, with the FDA everything else. It’s the “related” that gets tricky. Say there’s problems with a frozen cheese pizza — that’s FDA responsibility. But if the pizza has sausage or pepperoni on it, that’s in the USDA’s bailiwick, because it’s meat related.

This confusing split of duties can result in oversight based on arbitrary distinctions, rather than which agency has the best expertise. Assume the problem with the pizzas is its tomato sauce, which is the FDA’s bailiwick. Doesn’t matter, because sausage pizzas are handled by the USDA, period. Worse than this, food producers have the opportunity to carom between the agencies in cases of concurrent jurisdiction to get a beneficial ruling from wherever they have better connections.

This is a problem of missions. Food concerns have always been an afterthought at the FDA, which is primarily focused on drug regulations — the FDA food safety budget is only around one-quarter of the entire agency’s. The USDA, meanwhile, is fundamentally an agriculture promotion agency — its food safety activities are subordinate to the department’s overall goals of helping America’s farmers. A noble task, absolutely, but a conflicting one for public health.

But a national food agency would fix several demanding problems. Strategically, it makes sense to bring all food concerns into one house and utilize the synergy of all federal inspectors and monitors. This wouldn’t allow corporate representatives to pit one agency against the other. It also allows the FDA and USDA to jettison poorly fitting parts and focus on other important goals.

Understandably, Congress is currently focused on economic recovery plans. But strengthening the regulatory body and detection systems will help our economy by installing greater consumer confidence in processed food, and by identifying serious problems earlier. Remember, tomatoes were initially blamed for the jalapeno salmonella scare — to the tune of a $100 million industry loss when its products were perfectly safe. Fixing our system helps ensure that future jobs aren’t unnecessarily lost because of faulty detection systems.

The last thing Americans should worry about during the recession is whether the food their families are eating is safe. Fixing the federal food safety system would alleviate this growing public concern.

(Jonathan Cantu is food and drug safety associate for the Government Accountability Project, www.whistleblower.org.)