Texas could be at higher risk of food contamination
The US food and vitamin supply may not be as safe as we think, according to recent reports. This year’s pet food scare spurred intensive investigations into national regulations regarding human food and vitamin safety, and the results were not good.
Many of the products that create the most serious problems are distributed nationally, from Texas to New York to Missouri, and in national grocery chains, discount stores, and drug stores. States like Texas may be at particular risk, as many products are imported legally or illegally at the border. It’s almost certain that any major store in any town or city in the state, from Dallas to Houston to Austin, probably carries products imported from a country that has a history of contaminated food and vitamins. The implications this has for the healthcare and health insurance industries, not to mention public health in general, are astronomical. If a series of outbreaks occurs, it could prove especially damaging for Texas, where 25% of its residents are uninsured and the health care system is already overburdened.
According to Peter Kovacs, a food industry executive and consultant for forty years, “America is sitting on a tinderbox,” ready for food contamination problems to explode. Many of the nation’s major food producers are very careful with their products, he says. They have learned to trace their ingredients directly to their sources and test them regularly. However, this is not required, and many manufacturers do not do this, especially if the products are considered lower risk, such as pet food.
This is precisely what happened when pet food was contaminated with a wheat protein from China. China, already building a reputation for exporting contaminated food and vitamins, exported wheat protein from companies that added melamine and cyanuric acid to increase apparent protein content and price. This supposed higher protein content is one of the main reasons why more expensive brands like Iams were hit so hard. Believing they were buying a more potent product, they ended up contaminating millions of pounds of food due to one ingredient.
Recalls are common, they just don’t always make the national news. In recent months, milk, olives, bottled water, bread, prepared fruit platters, melons, oysters and peanut butter have been recalled for reasons ranging from dangerous levels of salmonella, listeria and arsenic to wire fragments in the food. . Last year’s national spinach e-coli scare came from Natural Selection Foods in San Juan Bautista, CA, and lead is commonly found in vitamins and dietary supplements. An estimated 76 million are victims of disease and 5,000 die each year in the US due to food contamination.
Just this February, ConAgra Foods recalled widely distributed Pan peanut butter due to salmonella content, which, in turn, was due to poor conditions at one of its plants. Europe simply dodged a bullet when it discovered, just before the product hit the market, that the Chinese-manufactured vitamin A used to supplement infant formulas was contaminated.
A major part of the problem in the US is the severe underfunding and lack of control by the Food and Drug Administration. Imports have doubled since 2002 to nine million shipments a year, and the FDA only has the resources to inspect one percent of them. Many of those imports come from countries without strict controls on their products, and are not regularly tested before they reach the US market.
Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, stated that “…we are not even close to having a system that guarantees that food is safe.” He should know. Two years ago, the FDA suspected Cold Stone Creamery of being responsible for a four-state salmonella outbreak, but its painfully outdated labs couldn’t detect the bacteria. The samples were sent to Doyle, whose laboratory collected them. The FDA simply “doesn’t have the resources,” he said.
Dr. David A. Kessler, a former FDA commissioner, would agree. “Our food safety system in this country doesn’t work,” he said.
In fact, many former FDA employees agree. William Hubbard, a senior policy official who left the FDA in 2005, warned ten years ago that the amount of food imported was on the rise, while the FDA’s ability to regulate such shipments was in decline. Attempts to resolve the situation were offered to Congress and were quickly rejected. Five years ago, they tried again with a $100 million import safety plan, cheap by today’s standards. The FDA also requested the authority to block food shipped from countries “repeatedly linked to contaminated products.” Both proposals were roundly rejected.
The fact that food manufacturers spend a million dollars each year lobbying against tougher regulations, and that megapowers like Wal-Mart also oppose tougher regulations, port inspections and country of origin labeling, doesn’t help. . These companies would lose business and make sure Congress knows it. Wal-Mart alone is China’s eighth largest trading partner, with 10% of all its imports going to the company. Chinese produce shipped to the US totaled a staggering $2.26 billion last year alone, and 90% of all vitamin C sold in the US is made there. Enforcing stricter regulations would effectively ban many of the products offered on the US market today.
On May 2 of this year, after widespread outbreaks that affected one product after another, from spinach to pet food to toothpaste to vitamins, Congress finally acted and passed a bill allowing the FDA to create bases of contaminated food data. It seems so terrifyingly simple, but until now, the organization didn’t even have the power or resources to electronically track contaminated shipments in detail and then circulate the information efficiently.
Hubbard says he can’t stop there, however, and recommends modeling the FDA after the USDA. While the USDA only inspects meat, and the FDA inspects everything else, the USDA has ten times as many inspectors, has the power and resources to send them to foreign plants, can deny entry of products from any company that does not comply with the safety rules. and limits the shipment of meat to a few ports to expedite the process. The FDA can’t do any of that. The FDA, realistically at this point, only has the resources to respond to problems that are already occurring.
The average American citizen at this point can take action by lobbying Congress for stricter regulations and buying as much local food as possible. Locally produced food is no guarantee, of course, that contamination won’t occur, but at least customers can see where their produce is produced and ask questions of those who actually grow it. As always, the best advice seems to be common sense and vigilance.
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