Sludge Watch ==> Fear of Eating - Commentary New York Times

[Maureen Reilly]

Fear of eating
21.may.07
New York Times

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21krugman.html


Columnist Paul Krugman writes that yesterday he did something risky: he ate 
a salad.
Who’s responsible for the new fear of eating? Some blame globalization; some 
blame food-producing corporations; some blame the Bush administration. But 
Krugman blames Milton Friedman.
Now, those who blame globalization do have a point. U.S. officials can’t 
inspect overseas food-processing plants without the permission of foreign 
governments — and since the Food and Drug Administration has limited funds 
and manpower, it can inspect only a small percentage of imports. This leaves 
American consumers effectively dependent on the quality of foreign 
food-safety enforcement. And that’s not a healthy place to be, especially 
when it comes to imports from China, where the state of food safety is 
roughly what it was in this country before the Progressive movement.

Those who blame corporations also have a point. In 2005, the F.D.A. 
suspected that peanut butter produced by ConAgra, which sells the product 
under multiple brand names, might be contaminated with salmonella. According 
to The New York Times, “when agency inspectors went to the plant that made 
the peanut butter, the company acknowledged it had destroyed some product 
but declined to say why,” and refused to let the inspectors examine its 
records without a written authorization.
According to the company, the agency never followed through. This brings us 
to our third villain, the Bush administration.
Without question, America’s food safety system has degenerated over the past 
six years. We don’t know how many times concerns raised by F.D.A. employees 
were ignored or soft-pedaled by their superiors. What we do know is that 
since 2001 the F.D.A. has introduced no significant new food safety 
regulations except those mandated by Congress.
This isn’t simply a matter of caving in to industry pressure. The Bush 
administration won’t issue food safety regulations even when the private 
sector wants them. The president of the United Fresh Produce Association 
says that the industry’s problems “can’t be solved without strong mandatory 
federal regulations”: without such regulations, scrupulous growers and 
processors risk being undercut by competitors more willing to cut corners on 
food safety. Yet the administration refuses to do more than issue nonbinding 
guidelines.
Why would the administration refuse to regulate an industry that actually 
wants to be regulated? Officials may fear that they would create a precedent 
for public-interest regulation of other industries. But they are also 
influenced by an ideology that says business should never be regulated, no 
matter what.
The economic case for having the government enforce rules on food safety 
seems overwhelming. Consumers have no way of knowing whether the food they 
eat is contaminated, and in this case what you don’t know can hurt or even 
kill you. But there are some people who refuse to accept that case, because 
it’s ideologically inconvenient.

That's why Krugman blames the food safety crisis on Milton Friedman, who 
called for the abolition of both the food and the drug sides of the F.D.A. 
What would protect the public from dangerous or ineffective drugs? “It’s in 
the self-interest of pharmaceutical companies not to have these bad things,” 
he insisted in a 1999 interview. He would presumably have applied the same 
logic to food safety (as he did to airline safety): regardless of 
circumstances, you can always trust the private sector to police itself.'

Earlier this month the administration named a “food safety czar.” But the 
food safety crisis isn’t caused by the arrangement of the boxes on the 
organization chart. It’s caused by the dominance within our government of a 
literally sickening ideology.