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Anonymous
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5/4/2007 7:45:00 AM
Jolley: Our Food Inspection System Is In Crisis - We Need To Act Now
"Simply put, our food safety system is broken…The reality is that there currently is no mandate, no leadership, no resources, nor scientific research base for [creation] of food safety systems." David Kessler
David Kessler is the former FDA commissioner and a man who should know. He was talking to the members of the House Oversight Committee about a rapidly growing crisis. Although he was referring to just the problems most recently evident with the FDA, it’s our entire food inspection system that’s failing miserably.
Here’s the most pressing recent problem: Monitoring the quality of imported ingredients to be used in animal or human food processing has proven itself to be the modern day equivalent of taming the wild and wooly West. Importers get an (almost) free pass to do as they please. For years, now, shady traders could ship anything into the U.S., safe in the knowledge that less than 1% of their shipments would receive even the most cursory inspection. Take that, Homeland Security! No holes in that safety net!
A few months ago, uninspected melamine-spiked wheat gluten from China found its way into pet food. By all reports, it’s a long-standing practice among many Chinese traders. The FDA assumed the crisis was handled after tons of product were recalled and thousands of pets died. Were the recalls the price of running a food business driven solely by least cost formulations? And would that make the resulting deaths merely collateral damage?
The crisis jumped ship, though. A Chinese rice protein concentrate, contaminated with melamine and melamine-related compounds, was fed to pigs and chickens. Federal investigators are looking into contaminated hog feed in six states - California, Kansas, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Utah.
The problem was traced back to feed produced in March. The belated discovery allowed hundreds of thousands of chickens and an unknown quantity of pork to reach the corner supermarket. Was that March incident a one-time thing? Maybe not. The inspection problem and Chinese chicanery stretches back for years. If we’re to follow truth in labeling laws, we should call it the first discovered incident.
FDA officials then attempted a CYA maneuver when they said we shouldn’t worry about the product that had already found its way into the nation’s human food supply. The melamine content was too dispersed to worry about, they said. But, to be safe, they’re requiring the destruction of thousands of animals that haven’t been converted to packaged product. Legally, FDA spokesmen say, it’s all they can do because they don’t have the authority to do more. They also claim it’s a scientifically sound decision, but it doesn’t pass the consumer’s sniff test which is the ultimate arbiter of what’s acceptable.
If the consumer thinks it stinks, it stinks. End of story. Also, end of commerce for the stinker. “Science” be damned!
I keep thinking about the assurances that the British government handed out to a gullible public in the earliest days of the BSE panic. “Don’t worry, I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” doesn’t necessarily cut it, anymore. Maybe the FDA should check with the UK Food Standards Agency for instructions on how to (mis)handle a food inspection crisis.
Simply put, the critical government agencies don’t have the manpower, money or political clout to do their job. The sweep of twenty-first century world commerce has overwhelmed the capacity of the USDA and the FDA. Both agencies are standing in the muddy backwaters of the mid-twentieth century, trying to figure out where undiscoverable and unknowable modern-day problems might be lurking.
Here’s the heart of the problem: Too many food (and feed) processors looked for the cheapest ingredients and found them in severely under-regulated foreign ports-of-call that the FDA and the USDA couldn’t touch. Processors didn’t understand the truth behind the Reagan dictum, “Trust, but verify.” They trusted their new foreign trading partner’s promises to deliver products equivalent to the more expensive (because they’re highly regulated) products they used to buy from North American suppliers. They weren’t able to verify those promises, though, and the true price of cheaper ingredients is now being paid by both the “control-costs-at-all-costs” processor and the consumer.
Washington needs to summon the political will to act now, even if they are a day late and a dollar short. A combined and better-funded USDA and FDA is the only answer to improved inspection of a much more complex food chain that’s been truly international for decades. Borders to our food supply simply do not exist and our responsible federal agencies haven’t been properly equipped to handle that kind of world.
Source: Chuck Jolley
Jolley: Our Food Inspection System Is In Crisis - We Need To Act Now
"Simply put, our food safety system is broken…The reality is that there currently is no mandate, no leadership, no resources, nor scientific research base for [creation] of food safety systems." David Kessler
David Kessler is the former FDA commissioner and a man who should know. He was talking to the members of the House Oversight Committee about a rapidly growing crisis. Although he was referring to just the problems most recently evident with the FDA, it’s our entire food inspection system that’s failing miserably.
Here’s the most pressing recent problem: Monitoring the quality of imported ingredients to be used in animal or human food processing has proven itself to be the modern day equivalent of taming the wild and wooly West. Importers get an (almost) free pass to do as they please. For years, now, shady traders could ship anything into the U.S., safe in the knowledge that less than 1% of their shipments would receive even the most cursory inspection. Take that, Homeland Security! No holes in that safety net!
A few months ago, uninspected melamine-spiked wheat gluten from China found its way into pet food. By all reports, it’s a long-standing practice among many Chinese traders. The FDA assumed the crisis was handled after tons of product were recalled and thousands of pets died. Were the recalls the price of running a food business driven solely by least cost formulations? And would that make the resulting deaths merely collateral damage?
The crisis jumped ship, though. A Chinese rice protein concentrate, contaminated with melamine and melamine-related compounds, was fed to pigs and chickens. Federal investigators are looking into contaminated hog feed in six states - California, Kansas, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Utah.
The problem was traced back to feed produced in March. The belated discovery allowed hundreds of thousands of chickens and an unknown quantity of pork to reach the corner supermarket. Was that March incident a one-time thing? Maybe not. The inspection problem and Chinese chicanery stretches back for years. If we’re to follow truth in labeling laws, we should call it the first discovered incident.
FDA officials then attempted a CYA maneuver when they said we shouldn’t worry about the product that had already found its way into the nation’s human food supply. The melamine content was too dispersed to worry about, they said. But, to be safe, they’re requiring the destruction of thousands of animals that haven’t been converted to packaged product. Legally, FDA spokesmen say, it’s all they can do because they don’t have the authority to do more. They also claim it’s a scientifically sound decision, but it doesn’t pass the consumer’s sniff test which is the ultimate arbiter of what’s acceptable.
If the consumer thinks it stinks, it stinks. End of story. Also, end of commerce for the stinker. “Science” be damned!
I keep thinking about the assurances that the British government handed out to a gullible public in the earliest days of the BSE panic. “Don’t worry, I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” doesn’t necessarily cut it, anymore. Maybe the FDA should check with the UK Food Standards Agency for instructions on how to (mis)handle a food inspection crisis.
Simply put, the critical government agencies don’t have the manpower, money or political clout to do their job. The sweep of twenty-first century world commerce has overwhelmed the capacity of the USDA and the FDA. Both agencies are standing in the muddy backwaters of the mid-twentieth century, trying to figure out where undiscoverable and unknowable modern-day problems might be lurking.
Here’s the heart of the problem: Too many food (and feed) processors looked for the cheapest ingredients and found them in severely under-regulated foreign ports-of-call that the FDA and the USDA couldn’t touch. Processors didn’t understand the truth behind the Reagan dictum, “Trust, but verify.” They trusted their new foreign trading partner’s promises to deliver products equivalent to the more expensive (because they’re highly regulated) products they used to buy from North American suppliers. They weren’t able to verify those promises, though, and the true price of cheaper ingredients is now being paid by both the “control-costs-at-all-costs” processor and the consumer.
Washington needs to summon the political will to act now, even if they are a day late and a dollar short. A combined and better-funded USDA and FDA is the only answer to improved inspection of a much more complex food chain that’s been truly international for decades. Borders to our food supply simply do not exist and our responsible federal agencies haven’t been properly equipped to handle that kind of world.
Source: Chuck Jolley