Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (48 page)

One repeated suggestion for a better method to address food safety problems is to centralize their oversight in a single administrative unit. Soon after the September 2001 events, officials throughout government agencies called on Congress to fund improvements in food safety and public health systems, especially those involving disease surveillance, food production quality control, food security (in the antibioterrorism sense), and inspection of imported foods.
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The GAO pointed out that the threat of bioterrorism provided further evidence for the need to create a single food agency, and the Senate held hearings to debate that suggestion. While mulling over (or dismissing) the merits of this idea, Congress increased funding to allow the FDA to hire inspectors so the agency could double its capacity to oversee the safety of imported foods—from 1% to 2% of the total entering the country. The FDA asked for additional authority: to issue recalls, and to require food companies to increase preparedness against sabotage and demonstrate the traceability of ingredients and products. The consumer advocacy organization Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) supported these requests, saying, “The success of such efforts would benefit from measures that CSPI has advocated for years—measures thwarted by the lobbying power of the food industry. If there has ever been a time to put safety before profits, it is now.”
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At the Senate hearings, however, food industry officials flatly opposed such measures on the grounds that they would be expensive to implement and would force companies to open their books to federal regulators. One official of the Grocery Manufacturers of America said, “Before we scrap a system that is regarded as the best in the world, we should fully explore strategies to enhance the current system, through adequate
funding, better coordination, and continued innovation”; another said, “I think we’ve already got the system in place to deal with terrorism. . . . We just need more information from the government to make sure we can address any potential threat.”
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Officials of the National Food Processors Association (NFPA) insisted that mandatory recall authority was not needed because its members were already recalling products. Instead, the only action needed is to

heighten awareness of food security issues on the part of the food industry, across the board, while at the same time not increasing anxiety on the part of consumers. . . . Our current food safety system not only works, but works well. . . . We strongly believe that the best way to improve our nation’s already admirable record on food safety is to continue progress towards a unified science- and risk-based food safety policy, including increased communications and improved coordination, rather than focusing on the creation of a new bureaucracy in the form of a single food agency.
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Instead, the NFPA preferred another strategy. It called on food industry trade groups to help create an Alliance for Food Security, a coalition of 80 food companies, government agencies, and public health groups united in encouraging federal agencies to cooperate and provide information about measures to enhance food safety. The alliance would develop guidance materials to help members “prevent—to the extent we can—threats from occurring to the safety of our nation’s food supply . . . [and provide] a vital comprehensive, and cooperative forum for industry and government at all levels to effectively enhance and augment—where necessary—our food security systems.”
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At least 18 trade associations representing every conceivable facet of food processing and marketing used such arguments and alliances to try to persuade legislators to drop provisions in bioterrorism bills that might give the FDA further authority over domestic and imported foods.
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While the bills were under consideration, both the FDA and USDA issued nonbinding guidelines for importers and domestic food producers, processors, transporters, and retailers.
Table 14
summarizes just a few of the FDA’s suggestions. Many of these measures seem more appropriate to penal institutions and are especially disturbing for what they conspicuously fail to mention—Pathogen Reduction: HACCP. Perhaps because following the advice is voluntary, the NFPA praised the FDA guidelines for “not identifying weaknesses in the system that could help terrorists and for giving companies flexibility in adopting security measures.”
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In the early months of 2002, Congress worked on antibioterrorism legislation to increase the FDA’s capacity to inspect imported food and
allow the agency to detain suspect foods without a court order, and to require food companies to register and open their records to government inspectors. Industry groups such as the NFPA, the Grocery Manufacturers of America, and the Food Marketing Institute lobbied against these provisions and requested exemptions for their members, arguing that any new legislation would be “a vehicle for a huge expanse in federal power.”
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When the final bill sailed through the House and Senate, industry groups called it “much improved,” no doubt because the bill required the FDA to put the new regulations through a standard rulemaking process and delay their implementation for another 18 months.
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TABLE 14
. FDA advice to food importers, producers, processors, transporters, and retailers about how to prevent problems with food security, 2002

SOURCE:
FDA.
Food Security Preventive Measures Guidance
, January 9, 2002. Online:
www.fda.gov
.

Soon after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, commentators identified at least one cause of the nation’s inability to respond adequately to such crises: years of neglecting the public health “infrastructure”—the oversight systems and personnel needed to track and prevent disease. The focus on “homeland security,” they said, although perhaps politically necessary to allay public anxiety, diverted attention and resources away from
basic public health needs. International actions also focused on matters other than public health, even when providing food aid. No responses to the crisis—domestic or international—were addressing “root causes”—the underlying social, cultural, economic, or environmental factors that might encourage terrorist activities. From the perspective of public health, bioterrorism may never entirely disappear, but it seems less likely to be used as a political weapon by people who have access to education, health care, and food, and who trust their governments to help improve their lot in life. If, as many believe, terrorism reflects frustration resulting from political and social inequities, it is most likely to thrive in countries that fail to provide access to basic needs, or that give lesser rights to ethnic, religious, or other minority groups. In such situations, public health can be a useful means to strengthen society as well as to avert terrorism.

The recent history of Afghanistan illustrates these points. Its health care system is poor by any standard, and its high infant mortality rate is approached by only one other country (Pakistan) outside of sub-Saharan Africa. As noted earlier, malnutrition is widespread, in part because only slightly more than one-tenth of the population has access to clean water supplies (contaminated water induces diarrheal and other infectious diseases that, in turn, contribute to malnutrition). In this situation, advised Richard Horton, editor of the
Lancet
, “Attacking hunger, disease, poverty, and social exclusion might do more good than air marshals, asylum restrictions, and identity cards. Global security will be achieved only by building stable and strong societies.”
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Because a healthy population is an essential factor in economic development, the health effects of globalization—positive and negative—become important concerns. Globalization has improved the social, dietary, and material resources of many populations, but it has also heightened economic and health inequities. Globalization brings safe drinking water and antibiotics, but it also brings pressures to reduce food safety standards, protect intellectual property rights, and accept the marketing of high-profit “junk” foods. Food shortages are of particular concern for at least three reasons: their harm to health, their destabilizing effects on civil order and economic development, and, not least, their breach of the social contract in which food security—in every sense of the term—is a basic human right.
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With these ideas in mind, the American Public Health Association suggests short- and long-term strategies to prevent terrorism and its adverse health consequences: address poverty, social injustice, and disparities; provide humanitarian assistance; strengthen the ability of the public
health system to respond to terrorism; protect the environment and food and water supplies; and advocate for control and eventual elimination of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons.
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Writer Laurie Garrett explains, “Public health is a bond—a trust—between a government and its people. . . . In return, individuals agree to cooperate by providing tax monies, accepting vaccines, and abiding by the rules and guidelines laid out by government public health leaders. If either side betrays that trust the system collapses like a house of cards.” The value of public health approaches, in her view, is to bridge the inequities and help bring a sense of community in which the health of each individual depends on the health of others.
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This idea makes sense, but it makes even more sense for societies to ensure safe and secure food for all citizens simply because it is the right thing to do.

I argue in this book that food safety is a political problem inextricably linked to matters of commerce, trade, and international relations. Ensuring food safety requires much more than following safe handling practices: it requires political action. We have seen how food companies often place commercial interests above those of consumer protection, and how government agencies often support business interests over those of public health. Today, the threat of food bioterrorism—the ultimate dread factor—reveals the importance of closing the long-standing gaps in oversight of food safety.

As consumers, we want to know that our government cares that the food we eat and the water we drink are safe (or safe enough). Given the topics discussed in this book, the FDA is less than reassuring when it tells us, “Consumers are final judges of the safety of the food they buy. . . . If there is any doubt about its safety, don’t eat it.”
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Surely, we would feel better if we knew that food companies were doing everything possible to minimize food hazards, and that the government was looking out for our interests and making sure food companies were doing what they were supposed to. In the absence of such reassurance, we lose trust. In the absence of trust, we are most frightened by food hazards that we cannot control: genetically modified foods, mad cow disease, and food bioterrorism, for example.

If food safety is a matter of politics, what kinds of political actions are necessary to ensure safe food and restore trust in our food supply?
Table 15
summarizes a few actions that we might demand of the food industry, our government, and ourselves. We can begin with the food industry: What is reasonable for us to expect from companies that produce, prepare, and distribute our food? Like any other industry, the goals of the food industry are to maximize income by reducing costs and eliminating inconvenient regulatory intervention. It is unrealistic to trust food companies to keep the interests of consumers paramount, and we have seen that they are unlikely to pay much attention to consumer concerns unless forced to by government, public protest, or fear of poor public relations. If food companies want consumers to trust them, they must earn that trust by following the rules, disclosing production practices as well as nutrient contents, taking responsibility for lapses in safety, and telling the truth about matters of public interest. We would be more likely to trust the motives of food companies if they embraced Pathogen Reduction: HACCP, incorporated environmental protection into every stage of production and distribution, argued in international forums for stronger food safety and environmental standards, and worked with—not against—domestic and international regulatory policies.

TABLE 15
. Suggestions for political actions to ensure safe food and improve trust in the food supply