The World’s Safest Food Ideally, no triage should be necessary. Providers and consumers should
have the same understanding of whether food is safe. The national food
safety system would be as agile and advanced as the underlying food
production system. Standards of food safety would not be contested
trade-offs between individual health and corporate profitability. Food-
borne outbreaks would become less and less frequent.
As is, when an outbreak is severe enough to grab the national spot-
light, a government official often assures the public that “The US food
supply remains one of the safest in the world.” My first reaction is
always: Compared to what? Burkina Faso in Africa? Probably so. Similar
countries in Western Europe? I have my doubts, unless some substanti-
ated data somewhere exists. Notwithstanding different opinions, saying
America’s food supply is safe implies there is little to improve on—as
if to say this latest outbreak was an aberration, a circuit breaker that
momentarily tripped, but remain calm as power will be restored shortly.
One of the biggest threats to food safety is surrendering to the
fact of widespread foodborne outbreaks as an everyday part of life. In
2002 , there were eight multi-state outbreaks. In 20 , the number had
jumped to thirty-eight—more than three per month. Foodborne out-
breaks are less and less front-page news. Were the Jack in the Box out-
break to occur today, would the public be sufficiently enraged to redefine
what was safe?
Whether we as consumers will accept the charge to establish what is
safe remains an open question. It’s worth asking ourselves: What are we
willing to pay for? The lion’s share of food safety expenditures are chan-
neled to FDA and FSIS. In 20 , their combined food-safety appropri-
ations, including user fees, were just over two billion dollars—almost
three hundred times less than what was spent on national defense. Or,
looking at it another way, for every hundred dollars in food expenditures,
taxpayers anted up around fifteen cents for food safety.
Over a century ago, outraged Americans demanded that their
government intercede to ensure that the food they purchased was safe
to eat. But wealthy, politically influential food manufacturers resisted.
In the end, consumer indignation and an emboldened president pre-
vailed. Today, multinational food companies are larger and more
consolidated than those of the antitrust era. They are well financed,