0 Unexpected Consequences
foodborne illness is always present, what is permissible within products
sold to consumers is important.
Several years ago, the European Union identified Salmonella as a sys-
temic threat across their food system. Reducing its prevalence became
a priority. In 20 , Salmonella was found in . percent of some 2 ,000
samples taken from processing plants or retail outlets. In America,
what is permissible is set by FSIS. For packaged poultry parts, .
percent of packages can contain Salmonella. For ground poultry, the
cutoff is 2 percent. With good reason, FSIS advises consumers to not
rinse raw chicken, as the bacteria splashing about can contaminate other
foods and kitchen surfaces.
This is a good moment to check in on who benefits from our grand
food bargain. Yes, consumers are getting more food for less effort, as is
clear from our growing waistlines and the money we spend on prepared
food. But food providers are benefiting as well, not just by producing
and delivering more food on a larger scale but also through global con-
solidation. As they become larger, their influence over countries, their
regulations, and how markets operate has grown.
This makes comprehensive food-safety oversight across the entire
food system even more important. In the European Union with its
twenty-eight countries and differences in culture, language, and levels of
economic development, food-safety oversight is led through one agency.
In the United States, oversight is a fragmented combination of laws and
regulations spread across multiple agencies with different underlying
missions. Calls for a single food-safety agency, by the government’s own
accountability office, continue to be ignored by Congress.
Why? What might appear to be broken to some, works perfectly well
for others. Establishing a unified agency could jeopardize the leverage
food providers have over how laws and regulations are passed (or not
passed) and enforced (or not enforced).
The existing approach, which muddles who decides whether food
is safe, provides room to cut costs and increase profits. At one time,
the meatpacking industry afforded a respectable blue-collar middle-
class lifestyle, paying more than most other manufacturing jobs. Meat
packers were a proud and highly visible segment of the American