The theatrics on display at the Senate stimulus bill sessions are nothing in comparison to the circus at the Salmonella Senate hearings, where Senators toss out peanut references left and right, but manage to ignore the pink elephant in the room: the Federal Drug Administration.
Senators wielded contaminated products in a glass jar wrapped with caution tape, berated the president of the Peanut Corporation of America, and ensured American mothers that they would one day be able to feed their children peanut butter and jelly with good conscience. Now that the stimulus bill is passed, Congress should turn off the theatrics and correct the problems plaguing the FDA.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 76 million Americans get sick from contaminated foods each year. Of these, 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die. That’s like an entire basketball team being taken out by food hazards each day.
Americans aren’t pleased. Consumer confidence in food purchased at restaurants and grocery stores declined by 16 percent, according to a 2007 survey by the Food Marketing Institute. USA Today readers reported that they were concerned about food from China and Mexico, but the most recent outbreak teaches us that sometimes the problems are in our own backyard.
The problem is the backyard in which we grow our food has gotten larger. We no longer shop at local supermarkets and farmers markets. The food system is more centralized, which means a smaller number of firms are shipping food to a larger number of people. And there simply aren’t enough inspectors to make sure that these companies are keeping their work environments – and our food – safe.
It seems simple enough. The FDA should hire more inspectors. Most of the funding for food safety, however, goes to the USDA, which monitors meat, poultry, and egg products. These foods make up about one-fifth of our current food supply and cause 27 percent of outbreaks. The FDA regulates everything else – about 80 percent of the food supply. By the time you tack on pharmaceutical drugs and medical machines, which the agency also oversees, you’ve got a pretty broad area. The FDA’s budget, however, is half the size of the USDA’s and it employs only 3,100 inspectors. This means that the FDA can afford to inspect food-processing plants once every 10 years.
It doesn’t help that the rules governing our food laws are over 100 years old and very complicated. For example, a cheese pizza is regulated by the FDA, which means it’s inspected once every ten years. Pepperoni pizzas are regulated by the USDA, which has the manpower to conduct daily inspections. Next time you’re popping a frozen pizza into the oven, hedge your bets and go for the pepperoni. As Senator Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee states, “to say that food safety in this country is a patchwork system is giving it too much credit.”
Congress has looked into restructuring the FDA in the past, but issued no substantive reform. The scope of the current outbreak, however, gives Jim O’Hara, a former FDA official and current director of the Produce Safety Project for the Pew Charitable Trusts, hope for revamped efforts.
“The human cost has become so visible and undeniable that I think we may finally get the action the broken system has deserved for more than a decade now,” O’Hara said.
President Obama has called for a complete review of FDA operations, but in the meantime Congress can pass much needed legislation.
1. The FDA should be split into two separate agencies, one regulating food products and the other regulating drugs and medical equipment.
2. Lawmakers should pass legislation that gives the FDA the authority to mandate recalls, trace back food to its original source, and detain food believed to be contaminated.
3. The FDA should require foreign governments to certify their food safety procedures before imported food is accepted into the US.
Some of these steps have been taken by Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and House Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), both of whom introduced legislation forming a new National Food Safety Administration responsible for overseeing all food regulation. Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, supports the idea, stating, “I’m not one to… add new bureaucracies, but this may be a time where we see the FDA can’t do that job.” Legislators in Georgia, the site of the most recent outbreak, have taken a lead in reform, introducing bills that enable county health officials to inspect local plants and require companies to report the results to state regulators.
The peanut industry is already reeling from the recent outbreak. And past trends indicate that the downfall will continue. After the 2006 spinach E. coli outbreak, spinach farmers lost $350 million. Peanut farmers have already reported a 20 percent drop in sales and the Peanut Corporation of America has filed for bankruptcy. Congress must act swiftly to reinforce trust in our food system. We’ve been disappointed in a number of American institutions over the past few months; it’s time America got something right.