After reading A Hungry Thanksgiving for Many Americans by OrangeClouds115 http://www.dailykos.com/... I started thinking that in spite of the fact that many will be going hungry on Thanksgiving (like every other day) how may of us who will be eating, will be getting exposed to unsafe food (like every other day) ? We are told we have the safest food supply in the world. Do we really? I suppose it depends on the comparison. Somalia? Kenya ? In developing countries close to 2 million children die every year from contaminated food and water. So I guess we can say we have a safer food system than theirs, wow! How do we fare compared to other industrialized countries?
The Centers for Disease Control and Preventions estimates that there are 76 million cases of food-borne illness yearly in the U.S., roughly one out of every 4 people (I know, those figures are years old, but Washington is supposed to keep records, not me). Food-borne illness strikes the United Kingdom at a rate of roughly 1 in 10 people and hits Australia at the rate of around 3.7 per 100. Clearly, our food is not as safe as theirs, or as we are led to believe. As for it being the safest in the world, maybe not.
Most food-borne illness is caused by bacterial contamination -- E. coli, salmonella and other bacteria that generally just make us ill. In recent years, however, we are seeing new more virulent forms of these bacterial contaminants that can make food poisoning potentially lethal. Bacteria are also developing resistance to antibiotics, in part a direct result of overuse of antibiotics in the livestock industry.
E. coli 0157:H7 showed up in the 1990s in undercooked hamburger and now kills upward of 60 people yearly in the US. E. coli 0157:H7 thrives in the stomach of cattle fed high-grain diets, a standard practice in large commercial feedlots in the U.S. Meat becomes contaminated when it comes in contact with manure, an all to common occurrence in huge processing plants where overworked, underpaid workers are expected to process too many animals in too little time. USDA budget cuts have left too few inspectors to adequately monitor those plants.
Did you ever read the safe handling instructions on a package of meat? A friend of mine, a farmer from Cornwall in the UK, read it when he last visited the states and said "if we were to put something like this on our meat it would never sell". He said we are basically admitting we have shit in out meat. Being an activist he suggested doing an "action". Go to a supermarket and place a small bowl of cow shit near the meat counter, tell the shoppers "we work very hard to insure our meat is clean and safe, we keep the shit out of it, but here is a bowl and a spoon, if you want it in there add it yourself". That wasn't dry British humor either, he was serious.
And it's not just meat. Spinach contaminated with 0157:H7, probably from irrigation water that flowed too close to large cattle lots, caused a real problem since spinach is often eaten raw. So again the contamination is a result of industrial farming practices.
Melamine is extracted from coal by the use of heat and chemicals and has been illegally used in China as an additive to raise the protein tests of human and animal food. This new food contaminant adds no nutritional value to the food and is, in fact, a toxin that can cause illness and death. In China it was responsible for sickening over 90,000 infants. In a globalized food economy, melamine has gone worldwide in Chinese dairy products, eggs and therefore many, many processed foods.
It could just be a coincidence, but on the same day that Congress passed a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street (money we will no doubt have to borrow from China) the FDA set a tolerance level of 2.5 parts per million for melamine in food. Tolerance level! Should we have to tolerate any? It is a poison, but if it makes China happy ...
While we expect domestically produced foods to meet certain safety requirements, foreign producers and processors are not bound by those requirements and imported food enters our food chain every day. Additionally, poorly regulated domestic processing plants value profit over food safety and hope to place the burden of contaminated food on the consumer when they hide behind the "Safe Handling Statement" on the package.
So why, other than the obvious reasons, are the issues of food safety, industrial farming and a globalized food supply so critical now? In a few weeks a new president will be inaugurated and a new administration will hopefully change Washington. New agency appointees at the FDA and USDA could reform our food system.
It is not difficult to produce safe food. It is not difficult to keep the food safe through processing. It is not difficult for farmers, workers and consumers to share the benefits of a local food system. What is difficult is expecting safe food from a system run by profit-oriented corporations and overseen by bureaucrats who were part of that same corporate food system.
So will we let the new administration appoint industry hacks to positions in USDA, FDA, EPA, HHS etc? Obama is an intelligent caring person, but industry has a lot of clout and a lot of money. His decisions are only as good as the advice he listens to, the advisors he keeps. So far, he seems to be leaning a little too far towards the old Clinton administration, and while they were a step above the DC cowboys of the past eight years, they were free trading, pro-business and in many respects anti-regulatory, Do we want that again, are we OK with e-coli, salmonella and Melamine?