Sludge Watch ==> Poor food - Poor Regulation

[Maureen Reilly]

Editorial
 Thu, Sep. 28, 2006

Poor food, poor regulation
AL MEYERHOFF and WILLIAM B. SCHULTZ
Federal agents are scurrying across the Salinas Valley -- the nation's 
''salad bowl'' -- in search of the source of the E. coli contaminating the 
spinach supply. They won't find it without a mirror, because the real 
culprit in this case is the U.S. government.
A half-dozen federal agencies administer a patchwork quilt of outdated 
standards, inadequate inspections and porous statutes that allow pollution 
in the fields and in the packing houses and contaminated food on the 
supermarket shelves.
Millions of Americans are sickened by various food products each year; some 
9,000 die.
Today, American food is more manufactured than grown. Following a 
scorched-earth approach, workers wearing ''spacesuits'' inject nerve agents 
into the soil before planting, leaving nothing alive.
Hogs grow enclosed in facilities several stories high. Tomatoes are picked 
green, gassed and then canned.
Writing almost 70 years ago, journalist Carey McWilliams was prescient in 
his classic work: We now truly do have ''factories in the fields.'' And 
factories, whether manufacturing steel or frozen peas, generate waste -- in 
agriculture some 1.4 billion tons per year, 10,000 pounds for each American.
Some of these wastes have a nasty habit of returning in our food.
Though it is not known for sure, the E. coli in spinach most likely came 
from the Salinas River or its tributaries -- a system of virtual sewers from 
agricultural runoff and flooding. Since 1995, there have been 20 other E. 
coli poisonings of spinach and lettuce, eight in the Salinas Valley -- where 
nearly every waterway violates national clean-water requirements.
Pathogens, animal waste, agrichemicals and fertilizers routinely enter our 
food supply, either from environmental pollution, as with E. coli, or 
intentionally, as in the case of pesticides. Infected animals confined in 
feed lots are dosed with antibiotics; the lots themselves produce 
''lagoons'' of runoff, contaminating the land, water and the food itself.
Three agencies within the Agriculture Department and two within the 
Department of Health and Human Services, plus the Environmental Protection 
Agency, have overlapping jurisdiction over the food supply. None has 
overarching authority or responsibility for the quality of food.
The Government Accountability Office said recently that ''it is at times 
difficult to determine which agency is even responsible for a particular 
food product,'' and ''arbitrary jurisdictional lines can make the current 
system difficult to assess and, more importantly, unresponsive to the needs 
of the public.''
With the federal food safety system so inadequate, it's particularly 
troubling that earlier this year the House of Representatives passed 
legislation to override state laws establishing food quality requirements 
that are more stringent than the federal standards.

Unlike prescription drugs, food does not go through an approval process. The 
integrity of the system depends heavily on the agency's inspection force in 
the food production system. Yet the Food and Drug Administration, with 
responsibility for all processed food products except meat and poultry, has 
1,962 inspectors for more than 100,000 facilities -- a decrease of more than 
250 inspectors since 2003.

Today, food processing plants are inspected on average once every 10 years. 
Imported food is almost never inspected. The Department of Agriculture has 
about 6,000 employees who inspect meat and poultry plants, but use of the 
inspectors is ''not based on the food safety risk of particular products,'' 
the GAO says.
As a public policy matter, scientists and consumer advocates have 
consistently recommended consolidation of all food safety functions under a 
single independent agency. Just as consistently, this recommendation has 
been blocked by agency turf wars and agribusiness clout. But don't despair. 
September is National Food Safety Education Month.

Al Meyerhoff, an environmental attorney, is a past director of the Natural 
Resources Defense Council public health program.
William B. Schultz was an FDA deputy commissioner from 1994 to 1998.
They wrote this for the Washington Post.
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/editorial/15627699.htm