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Put food safety at the top of the menu

Like a plot from a horror movie, the thing that is supposed to make people healthy instead sickens and kills them. Only it's really happening in the United States in the form of foodborne illness, increasingly from fresh vegetables.

That's what killed a 2-year-old in Idaho earlier this year when his mother added spinach to his smoothie drink. The spinach was contaminated with a particularly virulent strain of E. coli bacteria that showed up again recently in ingredients (most likely lettuce) used by some Taco Bell restaurants. In all, 5,000 Americans die and 76-million are sickened each year by foodborne illnesses.

How can it happen in a society as advanced as ours? The answer seems to come down to careless farming and production practices and inadequate federal oversight.

In the recent spinach scare, which left three dead and 200 ill, the suspect produce came from a California grower whose fields were close to cattle operations where the deadly E. coli 0157:H7 strain was present. Clearly that is not good farming practice, yet such decisions are left up to individual growers.

Major food-safety regulation is split between two federal agencies, though not in a particularly sensible way. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, for example, is responsible for inspecting meat processing plants and visits each one daily. The Food and Drug Administration oversees vegetable processing, yet it visits each facility only once every five years on average. The FDA is understaffed and underfunded to carry out its food safety role.

Neither the USDA nor the FDA has the authority to order a food recall when a threat is discovered, although the food industry usually does so voluntarily. And while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gathers valuable information about outbreaks of illnesses linked to tainted food, states are not required to report such matters to the CDC.

The fixes to this growing threat aren't that mysterious. A study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, called "Outbreak Alert! Closing the Gaps in Our Federal Food-Safety Net," recommends two general areas for improvement. Require all states to follow national standards for tracking and reporting disease outbreaks to the CDC. Put food safety regulation under a single, independent agency that is properly funded to carry out its duties.

That's certainly a good starting point for Congress, which in the past has been too much influenced by the food industry to take meaningful action. Too many Americans already have died after the seemingly healthy act of eating fresh vegetables for lawmakers not to feel a sense of urgency.

[Last modified December 17, 2006, 21:53:10]