The World’s Safest Food 3ence is good at informing, deciding what is safe is our job as a society.
Food safety really comes down to what consumers demand of their
government. When those demands are unspoken or unheeded, others
insert themselves, with their own criteria, to decide for us.
The results are unnecessary acute illness and sometimes death.
In 20 3 , an outbreak of Salmonella started on the West Coast and spread
to twenty-nine states and Puerto Rico. All the government’s epidemio-
logic evidence pointed to a Foster Farms poultry processing plant in
California. But because Salmonella has never been declared an adulter-
ant, and before FSIS would take regulatory action, the agency wanted
a perfect genetic match linking the specific plant to Salmonella in an
infected consumer who ate poultry coming from that plant.
So public funding for scientists and investigators were poured into
finding a consumer sick enough to report their illness, but who had
kept uneaten product and its label. Eighteen months and an estimated
8, 00 illnesses after the outbreak began, a genetic match was found,
confirming the earlier evidence.
In June 20 , FSIS proposed that China be allowed to export
chickens, ducks, and turkeys it raises. Inspection of products after ar-
riving in the United States would be at the discretion of FSIS. What is
decided in one meat sector can guide what happens in another. Smith-
field Foods, you will recall, is a Chinese company that controls one of
every four pork products retailed in the United States. Their influence
with the pork industry’s trade association, the National Pork Producers’
Council, cannot be overstated. To no one’s surprise, the president of the
NPPC wrote in favor of the rule.
In 20 8 , FSIS proposed a voluntary inspection system for pork.
Under the arrangement, slaughter plants would determine which food-
borne pathogens to monitor. Per the USDA acting deputy undersecre-
tary, “We would be removing the generic E. coli (testing) requirement
and really allowing establishments to choose what they want to sample
for.” Also, she went on, in an effort to “remove unnecessary regulatory
obstacles to innovation,” plants could operate at whatever line speed
they wanted.
The presence of pathogens in meat belies a larger issue: what is
sitting in supermarket display cases—as well as home and restaurant
refrigerators—is not always safe to eat without consumers taking added