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StumbleSUN EDITORIAL:
Time for a needed change
Congress should move quickly to bolster food safety laws, regulation
Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.
Federal investigators said the two massive Iowa farms involved with this summer’s outbreak of salmonella had serious health and safety issues.
About half a billion eggs have been recalled, with one of the farms responsible for producing 380 million of those eggs. Health officials say it is possible that thousands of people were sickened by eating tainted eggs. In response, the Food and Drug Administration plans to visit 600 major egg producers over the next 15 months. The FDA also noted that it recently released tougher safety regulations regarding eggs.
Unfortunately, that is too little too late. The outbreak, along with the government’s response, is a demonstration of the need to overhaul the nation’s food safety laws. As The New York Times recently reported, the laws are complex and dysfunctional, splitting jurisdiction between agencies. For example, the FDA is responsible for overseeing the safety of what is inside the eggs, but the Agriculture Department is responsible for regulating the safety of the chickens, oversees liquid eggs used in industrial food production and grades the eggs.
There should be one agency in charge. The current way leaves manufacturers open to different standards and regulations. It also leaves the potential for gaps in oversight because no one is in charge of overseeing the entire process.
As well, as we have noted before, federal regulators don’t have the resources to do the job. The FDA doesn’t have enough inspectors to visit food production plants or to check imported food shipments. One estimate suggests that egg farms like the ones in Iowa might be inspected by the FDA once every five years.
Part of the problem with food safety oversight is that it is set up to be reactionary — agencies often respond to problems instead of aggressively working to prevent them. In the FDA’s latest rules regarding egg production, it doesn’t require that chickens be given an inexpensive vaccination for salmonella despite evidence that it would help protect the public. In the late 1990s, Great Britain responded to a salmonella outbreak by ordering vaccinations of all birds. Since then, salmonella cases are down by 96 percent.
“We have pretty much eliminated salmonella as a human problem in the U.K.,” Amanda Cryer of the British Egg Information Service, an industry group, told the Times.
In Britain, there are less than 600 cases of salmonella a year. The FDA estimates there are 142,000 cases of illness due to salmonella in the United States every year.
It is clear that the nation needs to reform the way food safety is regulated. A bill that would make significant changes in federal oversight passed the House a year ago but stalled in the Senate. This month, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee released a compromise proposal negotiated between a bipartisan group of senators. While there are still a few key issues that need to be worked out, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, the committee chairman, said he was hopeful that the bill would come up for debate after Congress returns from its recess.
We hope so. Food safety is an issue that affects every American, and it is clear the country can do better. The Senate should make this legislation a priority.
Discussion: 8 comments so far…
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A good editorial, and not one-sidedly political like so many other of the Sun's "editorials".
The issue of factory farms and animal cruelty is an integral part of this food safety problem. Future generations will be appalled at our treatment of these innocent animals at every stage of their miserable lives until they grace our dinner tables.
Gub'mint ba-ah-ah-ah-ad!
Freedumbs of corporations gooood!
RegUlations are fer Soshlests wienies, goofs, dorks, and beggar classers!
--tbigs
How about its time for the neutered government to start enforcing the laws of the land, not working to expand the monster it wants to become.
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Yes ... but, the laws do not address this and therefore how can a nonexistant law be enforced?
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Republican talking points ... paid for and orchestrated by the Koch brothers , the billionaires trying desperately to hide their investment in think tanks and Institutes and Associations and Lobbyists and of course Rupert Murdoch's Fox News .... its amusing how they have now been exposed and their robots turned to prostitutes on their behalf and all sounding identical, bought and paid for .... idiots.
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Don't Cry For Me Arizona
The spinach e coli contamination is still affecting frozen spinach sales, even though frozen spinach was never recalled.
Farms, packers, wholesalers established the LGMA - the Leafy Green Marketing Association, The industry asked for government regulation and government inspections, noting that a "bad apple" in the industry will bring down the industry as a whole.
Whether tainted peanut paste, bad spinach, lettuce, eggs or oil rig and mine fatalities, we need more government regulations. (Canada, Norway and Brazil require relief wells to be drilled as a deep water well is developed.)
The libertarian loonies, backed by people like the Koch's (search engine their companies health and safety regulations) have cost thousands of Americans their lives.
Sillyness. Anytime there is a problem you people want more government power for the agency that failed to prevent the problem in the first place.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/08/30/ha...
"In the private sector, entities that fall short of doing their jobs find themselves forced to shrink. In the public sector, the opposite is typically true. Failure is an option, and often a beneficial one.
The Federal Reserve Board and Treasury facilitated the 2008 financial crisis? Then obviously we have no choice but to give them even more responsibility. The Securities and Exchange Commission let Bernie Madoff rob investors? A bigger SEC will be a smarter SEC."
According to Republican politicians we do not need stronger food safety laws and regulations. Republican politicians say it is time for citizens to take personal responsibility for the food they consume and not expect the government to be your nanny. If you choose to consume tainted eggs, peanut butter, spinach, meats, etc., deal with it. After all, the big corporations have us in their back pockets and it is they for whom we actually work. We just need your vote.
The editorial states the following: "The FDA estimates there are 142,000 cases of illness due to salmonella in the United States every year."
How many of those cases are the result of a tainted food supply as opposed to the stupidity of the person preparing the food? That is a critical number in evaluating the effectiveness of the FDA. No amount of regulation will prevent a person from using old food or cooking it improperly and those cases should not be included when looking at the system itself.
That is right ionfield, big corporations want to sell you tainted food, get you sick and kill you, that way you'll be a repeat customer, buy more of their products, and they won't go under because of bad publicity or major lawsuits...
It is called GREED, Patrick, and risk management. They do not intentionally want to sell you tainted food, but they are much too willing to take the risk that by cutting costs and not taking necessary precautions, they just might get away with selling products that have not been properly vetted. Without laws and regulations, greed rules and the public suffers.
Yes and as greedy individuals they also don't want to lose your business by selling you tainted products. They don't want to be sued for millions of dollars.
Bad PR can kill companies. There have already been US companies that have gone bankrupt by selling just 5 bad cans of soup.
Btw, do you think that working for government magically makes you immune from greed and self-interest?
Patrick_R_Gibbons: "Btw, do you think that working for government magically makes you immune from greed and self-interest?"
Absolutely not. Greed and self-interest is probably more rampant within government than elsewhere, especially with elected politicians who depend on donations from corporations and special interest groups for reelection.
Well that certainly has a lot of truth to it, but it's an argument for less government not more. As it turns out, corporations and special interests like using big government to squash competition, fix prices and otherwise disable their competition.
Ever notice how conservatives fight like hell against any and all regulations, and then work to de-fund the agencies and appoint industry cronies when they're in office. Then when the oil spill or the salmonella crisis occurs they blame the gub'mint for the problem.
Nice trick, but we're on to you Koch brothers shills (hi, pat). Only a fool throws out the baby with the bathwater, so quit with that old crappy-*ss argument. Sensible people want competent oversight in government, otherwise we really will become a Libertarian paradise--like Somalia.
Congrats Okra, you can repeat what you read in the New Yorker and what you hear from MSNBC troglodytes like Rachael Maddow. But the real question is whether you can think for yourself...
http://reason.com/blog/2010/08/25/the-of...
http://reason.com/blog/2010/08/24/in-whi...
PS, Somalia was a failed socialist state before it collapsed.
more: http://reason.com/blog/2010/08/31/the-co...
gibs writes:
"Follow the bouncing ball. The dems did subprime, and the credit market meltdown brought down the house."
You can make a cool $100,000 if you can prove your assertion, gbigs, and you already know that. The offer still stands--as does the analysis of what really happened. Not surprisingly, the realty does not mesh with your ideology, but then neither does evolution:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/05/rew...
AP
Every post today by Patrick_R_Gibbons is irresponsible and only shows that he is a blatant propagandist for NPRI/NV, He tells us he is an educational policy analyst, but he really is just a narrow minded "Hatchetman" for that segment of the Corporate/ business community that is Corrupt, Totalitarian, and Incompetent.
NPRI/NV gets funding from the unthinking tank, Cato Institute that was started by the Koch Brothers. The Koch Brothers have also funded the John Birch Society. The John Birch Society used to be referred to as Nazi's in three piece suits. Hardly anybody wears a vest anymore, but the John Birch Society has not changed it's philosophy.
Gibby-rish has this smelly XL posterior libray of smelly Red blogs he goes to support his original misinformation/lies. Gibby-rish piles them up higher and higher and sometimes he puts a kernel of truth on top and calls them a "Mountain of Truth" but we know that it is just pure Gibby-rish.
He claims he has a master's degree but that certainly is not evident. Has he forgotten everything he has ever learned? Why is he so happy to be a prostitute for those that want America to never recover? Why cannot he be a responsible America and help build a worthwhile future for all Americans?
Does he hate America? Why does he project all the blame of the miserable failure administration of bush/cheney and Wall St. on someone else than those that created the problem in the first place?
This "Thing" would rather push the lies furnished to him by his despicable masters than stand like a man on his own two feet, search for the truth, and tell the Nevada citizens the truth.
There are two things Fascist hate above all else--intelligence and truth.