Ten Steps To A Safer Food Supply: Part Two

"There is no more basic role for government than ensuring safe food..."

- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, July 9, 2010

The Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510) is not quite ready to be embalmed, according to Alicia Mundy of the Wall Street Journal, but it is definitely on life-support.

The bill faces opposition from Senator Tom Coburn, who wants to know how the Administration plans to cover the estimated $1.4 billion dollar cost of improving the country's food safety system. Small farmers are worried about paying for the improved sanitation standards and product tracing requirements contained in the legislation. And California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein wants to add a provision to ban bisphenol A in food packaging.

All in all, not a promising situation.

In Part One of this series, I proposed three steps towards putting food safety on a sounder footing in the United States. Here are some additional ideas:

Step 4. "Routine" does not make it right

USDA egg graders working at Wright County Egg wrote daily sanitation reports on conditions at the farm, but didn't notify FDA of the unsanitary conditions because "the conditions at the egg plant packing facilities were routine," according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Inspectors and graders working at USDA and FDA must be trained to view with alarm any conditions – "routine" or not – that put the health of the consumer at risk. These individuals must also be assured by senior management at both agencies that anyone who blows the whistle on deviations from food safety laws and regulations will be protected from reprisals.

Step 5. Implement existing food safety laws that have been languishing on the shelf

Congress passed an updated Sanitary Food Transportation Act in 2005, instructing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to ". . . issue regulations setting forth sanitary transportation practices . . . in food transport." On April 30, 2010, FDA finally published an Advance notice of proposed rulemaking to solicit data and information from the food transportation industry. That's five years of inaction – five years of unnecessarily exposing the country's food supply to possible insanitary or improper transportation and storage conditions.

There is simply no excuse for procrastination. Federal agencies must promptly begin the process of implementing food safety legislation as soon as it has been signed into law.

Step 6. Interpret existing food safety laws with a bias in favor of food safety

The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act states that a food is adulterated if (among other things):

• it bears or contains any poisonous or deleterious substance which may render it injurious to health;
• it consists in whole or in part of any filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance; or
• it has been prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions whereby it may have become contaminated with filth, or whereby it may have been rendered injurious to health.

The Federal Meat Inspection Act defines carcasses, parts of carcasses, meat, or meat food products as adulterated if (among other things):

• it bears or contains any poisonous or deleterious substance which may render it injurious to health;
• it consists in whole or in part of any filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance or is for any other reason unsound, unhealthful, unwholesome, or otherwise unfit for human food; or
• it has been prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions whereby it may have become contaminated with filth, or whereby it may have been rendered injurious to health.

FDA and USDA have the authority under these existing laws to act decisively when confronting contaminated food. To dither over which pathogens should be considered adulterants and which ones should be winked at is to shortchange the people that these agencies are in business to serve. What part of "injurious to health" do these agencies – most notably, USDA – not understand?

Please watch for Part Three of this series, where we'll continue our walk down the road to safer food.

If you would like to receive automatic email alerts for all new articles posted on eFoodAlert, please click here or submit your request using the sidebar link. Please include "subscribe eFoodAlert" in the subject line.