A call to action - food poisoning and food supply safety - Editorial

Vegetarian Times, Nov, 1996 by Toni Apgar

LIKE MOST OF US, I've seen the scary headlines about food poisoning and remember the awful Jack-in-the-Box incident in which four children died and 700 others were made ill by contaminated hamburgers. To tell you the truth, it confirmed my vegetarianism. And lately I've seen a flood of articles in other publications about the rising threat of food poisoning. But I naively never worried about my own risk or my family's because meat isn't on our menu, so contamination seemed improbable, if not impossible. I've learned, however, that when one element of our food supply is threatened, no one is safe.

In a two-part series that begins in this issue, our health editor Luise Light explains exactly how widespread and deadly is the problem of bacterial contamination. Vegetarians are far from immune--some of the largest outbreaks of poisoning have been from fruits, vegetables and dairy products. These foods were contaminated by bacteria that started out in the gut of an animal and made its way to the fertilizer or water used on crops or was transmitted during processing by a careless food service worker. This is a problem vegetarians can't turn away from simply because they don't eat meat.

The issue is so widespread food safety should be a national priority. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) should spearhead this change because it is the only federal agency that can effect sweeping changes to clean up our food supply from the start--at the farm.

The situation is not unlike that at the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). It took several major plane disasters to convince Washington that the FAA's original mandate--to promote air travel--ought to be changed toward one of assuring passengers' safety. We already have had several major food disasters. Up to 9,000 people die each year from bad food and water; in 1995, 177 died from commercial plane crashes. If 9,000 deaths made the front page of every major newspaper like the crash of TWA flight 800 last summer, one wonders how much more quickly politicians and the USDA might respond.

Like the FAA, the USDA was established as an agency to promote an industry, in this case, to promote the sale of farm products at home and abroad. It has been very successful. Farming's cash receipts totalled $202 billion last year. The spectre of U.S.-grown food and livestock poisoning Americans should be sufficiently horrible to get the attention of USDA officials. But if it isn't, perhaps the threat of economic repercussions will be. Already, some of our meat bound for other countries has to meet stricter cleanliness standards than if it were sold in the U.S. Unless we dean up our food supply, it faces potential global market discrimination.

The mop-up program proposed by President Bill Clinton, to use more scientific tests to detect contamination at critical points in food production, is fine as a first step, but it doesn't go far enough and it doesn't address either the core of the problem (a careless attitude toward bacteria--and animals--on the farm) or the scope of it. We have ignored the problem for so long, bacteria are mutating to defend themselves against our waning pharmacological arsenal.

The USDA's lad: of interest in public health must be reassessed. Until test year, not a single medical doctor was on staff at the food inspection unit, only doctors of veterinary medicine.

The cost of a more vigilant system is always brought up as a reason to ignore the problem. Politicians sell the American public and industry short on this issue. Just as Americans were willing to pay slightly more for cars with air bags (and in fact, refused to buy those without them) and as air travelers have repeatedly expressed their willingness to pay more for extra security measures, food shoppers undoubtedly would be willing to clip in for a safer food supply. What is lacking is not the will of consumers but true leadership at the USDA. Perhaps Vice President Al Gore should spearhead another committee--like the one on airline safety that was a result of a terrible airline crash--on food safety. His previous writings on the degradation of the environment--to which food production is no small contributor--indicate he could easily grasp the seriousness of the situation and its potential solutions.

Until we see that kind of leadership, this country's food supply will likely continue to deteriorate. We urge readers to make sure your representatives in Congress take up this issue in earnest. Your life could very well depend on it.