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How the Government Is Making You Sick
Contaminated spinach, suspicious green onions, E. coli-laden lettuce -- it seems like green vegetables are the newest threat to America.
Turns out there may be a reason: the Food and Drug Administration, charged with ensuring the country's food safety, hasn't gotten the funding to do the basic studies it needs to draft appropriate regulations. From today's Baltimore Sun:
Recurring outbreaks of food-borne illness from contaminated produce are "unacceptable" in today's society, the government says. But the Food and Drug Administration hasn't done much of the basic research that would let it write regulations to fix the problem.Six years after the FDA first issued general guidance to the produce industry on how it might prevent contamination from microbes such as E. coli 0157:H7, experts say federal regulators still can't answer key questions. . . .
Without such specifics, FDA talk of regulations to protect consumers from more outbreaks like the recent ones involving fresh spinach and Taco Bell restaurants could be little more than bureaucratic saber-rattling. . . .
In a business-friendly administration, many new regulatory efforts advance slowly, if at all. But the FDA's predicament is more acute because an agencywide budget squeeze is putting disproportionate pressure on its foods program. . . .
An internal budget analysis prepared this summer, "FDA Financial Realities," concluded that the FDA's food program budget would need $176 million more in 2007 to provide roughly the same level of service as it did in 2003.
Comments (26)
dzman49 wrote on December 27, 2006 9:30 AM:What makes me sick? We're spending $125 M in Guantanamo for a courtroom to try under 100 people. But no money for the FDA or other regulatory agencies that actually work in the public's interest.
Bill W wrote on December 27, 2006 12:42 PM:Perhaps they are just paving the way for Iraq and Afghanistan to be able to capitalize on the world produce market. How long before the "irradiated by depleted uranium" stickers?
E.Goldstein wrote on December 27, 2006 12:44 PM:Both of you, report yourselves to Big Brother for thoughtcrime immediately.
Chris wrote on December 27, 2006 1:07 PM:Remember POTSIWID!
Stands for the "Purpose of the system is what it does". Very handy for understanding how things really work in these confusing times where the stated purposes often don't align with the content (ie: healthy forests initiative).
I would submit that lately, the purpose of the FDA is not to protect the public interest, but to give cover to private business interests who can claim they are doing everything that can be done to deal with the problem.
For the sake of the smaller government crowd, lets imagine how a pure market system might handle a problem like this. In the absense of a government regulatory commission, private regulatory commissions (like the AMA for doctors) would approve methods and processes used in food production. The producers would pay for the service of being evaluated, in contrast to the FDA, which is taxpayer funded.
Producers would be allowed to lable their food to show their compliance with the process, and consumers would make informed buying decisions based on this. When a quality control issue such as E.coli surfaced, if the producers could show they followed approved process, then the Regulatory Agency would have a financial incentive to re-evaluate its methods.
Compared with an open market, the current system is more favorable to the business community, because:
- they don't pay for it, taxpayers do
- they can lobby the government to keep regulations from being too imposing
- when it fails, the government agency is blamed, and industry can claim they were following the rules.
- the FDA is less accountable to the public than a private agency who needs to protect its reputation.
So from a POTSIWID viewpoint, the system is working perfectly - to the benefit of agribusiness, and the detriment of the public.
Aaron G. Stock wrote on December 27, 2006 2:21 PM:To the benefit of agribusiness, eh? I imagine that's the aim, but I wonder how much money is being lost by the growers and by Taco Bell thanks to these outbreaks. Will it truly become better for agribusiness and the US economy to be poorly or un- regulated?
Chris wrote on December 27, 2006 4:03 PM:How long did it take after the mad cow case for people to start eating beef again? The public has a short attention span, it will hurt the bottom line for a little bit, but it will pass.
It seems noteworthy that nobody is proposing increased regulation, or better funding of the FDA. My guess is that when planning finances, businesses prefer the chance of a big expense, over the guarantee of a small one. When something like this happens, they can go to their shareholders and tell them this quarter's poor performance is do to a freak accident, and they are doing everything in their power to follow the government established guidelines, and prevent it from happening in the future.
Nancy wrote on December 27, 2006 9:38 PM:The short answer is that the government doesn't give a damn if people get sick and die from contaminated food. The President and Congress favor the interests of agribusiness over those of consumers because agribusiness writes the campaign contribution checks and because ideologically they favor the profits of business over the safety of consumers.
The trick is to have the FDA do just enough to mollify the public that the problem is being solved without forcing the food industry to actually change any of their unsafe but profitable practices.
Where's Upton Sinclair when you need him?
James wrote on December 29, 2006 7:56 AM:A recent, you know, "commenter" on another blog announced evidence from an "illegals web site" which proved that all the e-coli outbreaks were caused by illegals deliberately contaminating the crops they were picking with their own waste.
I shit thee not.
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