Congressman Smith Responds to Food Safety Concerns

I got this letter from Congressman Adam Smith's office on food safety:

Thank you for taking the time to contact me about food safety oversight at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) . . .

First, let me say I agree the FDA needs to do a much better job of ensuring the safety of the nation's food supply. Consumers count on government agencies to verify the food production practices followed by suppliers are consistent with public health principles. I am committed to ensuring the FDA has the personnel, procedures and equipment necessary to protect our nation's food supply.

. . . Please be assured I will do all I can to ensure changes are made at the FDA to improve the quality of food monitoring to ensure food safety for all. I also hope and expect that the hearings will result in several creative ideas for reforming our food safety regulations.

For fiscal year 2007 (FY07), the food safety activities within the FDA were funded at $380 million and under President Bush's FY08 budget request, the food safety activities and programs within the FDA would receive $391 million, an increase of $11 million from the FY07 level. I support this increase in funding, which will help develop better and more rapid methods of detecting food borne illness outbreaks and increase surveillance capabilities at the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. By increasing the resources and the number of experts in the fresh produce microbiological safety issues and food safety analysis, the FDA will focus on reducing illness due to contamination and allow food back on the shelves quickly once a threat has ceased. As the FY08 budget process continues to be debated in Congress, I will pay close attention to the funding level for food safety programs at the FDA and work to improve this critically important government function ...

Sincerely,

Adam Smith
Member of Congress

Looks like he "gets it". Yeah!

Congress is Letting Us Down (Again)

A new amendment, called Section 123, was quietly added to Title I of the 2007 Farm Bill a few weeks ago, and it is a huge step backwards on food safety. If passed, it would hamstring state and local food safety efforts by wiping out critical authority on meat, poultry and biotechnology.

The sweeping language of Section 123 would prevent states from prohibiting the sale of USDA-inspected products. This provision could prevent local health inspectors at a supermarket from condemning contaminated meat or spoiled poultry! Since 90% of food inspections are done at the state and local level, the impact could be severe.

Section 123 also prohibits states from passing laws that protect animal welfare, such as laws on horse slaughter and sale of horsemeat.

Finally, Section 123 prohibits state and local laws on biotechnology -- such as laws to review whether or not to grow genetically-engineered rice in a state.

After recent problems with Melamine in pet and livestock feed, Listeria in chicken, and E. coli in spinach and ground beef, we should be strengthening our food safety system, not weakening it! Tell our Representatives to stand up for food safety and oppose Section 123 in the Farm Bill.

Hope Your Lunch Has Settled Before You Read This

The Boston Globe has an editorial about the FDA. Some of the key points (sit down for this!):

The FDA is located in Montgomery County, Md. , a suburb of the nation's capital; the suburb's school board has a bigger budget than the FDA; the county's budget is twice that size.
...
After the 9/11 attacks, Tommy Thompson, then Health and Human Services secretary, demanded that the food inspection force at the nation's ports be improved, and 600 more inspectors were rapidly put in place to examine the burgeoning imports of food. Today, they are all gone, the victims of year-by-year budget cuts that cripple the agency's ability to do even rudimentary screening of our food.
...
There are 13 million food imports this year, with FDA able to inspect only about 1 percent. The system is so weak that many FDA professionals fear the word is out in the international community you can send virtually anything, of any quality, regardless of risk, to the United States, because no one's looking.
...
The FDA is responsible for inspecting over 200,000 food processing facilities in the United States, but because their staffing is so inadequate, they can get to most only once every 10 to 15 years....

GAWD!!!

I Love Paul Krugman

IF George Bush read anything, I like to fantasize that he opens the NY Times and is face to face with Paul Krugman's column. I bet big money it was one of his columns rather than a basketball game that made Bush choke.

Krugman calls it great this week in his column titled "Fear of Eating" -- his conclusions on the cause for the FDA failures:

This isn’t simply a matter of caving in to industry pressure. The Bush administration won’t issue food safety regulations even when the private sector wants them. The president of the United Fresh Produce Association says that the industry’s problems “can’t be solved without strong mandatory federal regulations”: without such regulations, scrupulous growers and processors risk being undercut by competitors more willing to cut corners on food safety. Yet the administration refuses to do more than issue nonbinding guidelines.

Why would the administration refuse to regulate an industry that actually wants to be regulated? Officials may fear that they would create a precedent for public-interest regulation of other industries. But they are also influenced by an ideology that says business should never be regulated, no matter what.

I love that guy! Sigh . . .

Good Article on FDA Failure

"beobjective" over at Daily Kos has an excellent article on the tainted food from China and FDA's lack of response. He reminds us of the Bioterrorism Act passed after 9/11 and how it ws suppose to give increased authority and resources to the FDA to detect adulteration of the food supply -- but instead a Canadian pet food company responsibily gave the first alert.

The money quote:

The FDA has the authority to cut off food shipments and raw material shipments that could end up in food or medicine. After the story of diethylene glycol contamination in Panamanian medicine appeared, the FDA warned drug manufacturers to be especially cautious. Wow, now that's reassuring. Apparently the FDA could care less? I don’t think so. Someone (want to bet it’s a Republican?) has a vested interest in keeping the flow of food products and raw materials from China uninterrupted and public health interests are a secondary concern. The fact that clear cut regulatory action beyond simple monitoring hasn’t occurred is frightening and tells you that the administration, once again, is behaving as an arm of the Republican party not the US government. The health of its citizens are being sacrificed to the financial well being of someone.

USDA shut off imported beef for a couple years after BSE was found in a single cow in Canada -- what is going on with the FDA?

Bill Mitchell Calls It!

Dog Food, Spinach, Peanut Butter, Pork & Chickens

I'm not a big fan of Free Trade -- I lived for years in Detroit and Free Trade was the final nail in the coffin for Detroit. But we CANNOT treat imported food like we treat food coming from our local farmer. There has to be a fundamental change made in how FDA and USDA inspect food coming in from other countries. They also absolutely need to have the power to issue recalls and be held harmless for publicizing critical information we need for our health. It's dangerous and irresponsible (or at a minimum embarrassing) for the FDA to admit that they know tainted grain went to several companies but can't tell us who or force them to do a recall.

This latest food scandal looks like it was caused by greed and cheating -- getting a better price by pretending the gluten is higher in protein than it really is -- but we just let every terrorist know where we are most vulnerable. I can't get on a plane to go from Seattle to Spokane without taking off my shoes and jacket and be inspected. It doesn't make any sense that strawberries grown in human waste or grain 'juiced' with a plastic comes into this country from wherever and poisons us without inspection or disclosure.

Congress needs to recognize where the risks really are and enhance and empower the FDA and USDA to effectively do their mission of protecting us.

Another Report on that FDA Conference Call

Rick Pearlstein also participated with that FDA conference call and reports:

"I know this has sort of been asked," another reporter pleaded, but why can't the FDA tell people which four companies had taken delivery of poisoned pet food ingredients before Fido finds out the hard way? "Our efforts," came the response, "are limited to...finished products that might reach consumers on the shelves."

And there it was. Conservative "government" at work. When it comes to foreign policy, the Bush Administration has propounded a "one percent doctrine": Even if there's a one percent chance they represent a threat, a country should be invaded anyway. When it comes to pork products people might eat--wouldn't want to put a corporation at risk.

Thom Hartmann frequently says that when we put people who don't believe in government in charge of the government, they do their best to dismantle it. Thom believes that the Bush administration has been effective in their goals.

Remind me -- why are we not impeaching them?

Tainted Pet Food Is Part of Larger Problem

Brilliant at Breakfast does a great job explaining the larger implications of the tainted pet food crisis. As he explains, it is already in our food:

We

learned yesterday that melamine-contaminated feed was fed to hogs.The FDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food and Agriculture are investigating.

Some animals that are believed to have eaten the contaminated food were slaughtered and sold as food before authorities learned their feed had been contaminated, said Nancy Lungren, spokeswoman for the California agriculture department

Brilliant discovers that the way this happened was that the hog farmer fed his hogs salvage pet food from Diamond Pet Foods Inc.

Get that? Salvage pet food!! They recalled the companion pet food and then fed it to our livestock!

WTF is wrong with the FDA that they let this happen???

Dog Food

Those of you who know me know my dogs are really important to me. This dog food recall of course concerned me -- I switched dog food, notified all my friends with dogs, gave my local Safeway the recall list since they were slow taking action (unlike Fred Meyer who took action immediately!) -- the news coverage seemed so limited. To be honest, the tin-foil-hat-conspiracy-theorist in me wondered if this was a terrorist attack on the US -- but I dismissed it and went on.

My fellow bloggers are investigating and doing a great job getting to the bigger story. See Itchmo , Dave Goldstein , Socko's Brain, and the gang at Pet Connections. They are doing GREAT investigative work on this issue. They even have gotten Senator Durbin to promise to conduct a hearing.

Here's some of the scary points they have uncovered: The Wheat Glutten came supposedly from China was graded for human consumption by the FDA. The FDA and Menu Foods knew about the problem for weeks and didn't think a public alert was necessary. FDA has failed to do a full investigation to see if any of the tainted grain has gotten into the human food chain but continues to make statements that it hasn't (this reminds me of when the EPA failed to do any air quality testing but announced that the air at Ground Zero after 9-11 was safe).

Here's Pet Connection's take:

The White House loves to use Fear when it serves their purpose. But when it effects a corporation's bottom line it's profits first, poodles last.

- The FDA didn't reveal the identity of the manufacturers of the wheat gluten until a blogger at Pet Connection found it. Why?

- The FDA didn't reveal the name of the US distributor of the gluten until the AP got it from another source. Why?

- The FDA hasn't required the US distributor of the wheat gluten to reveal to the public everyone they sold it to. Why not?

- The Chinese company the FDA identified as the sole source of the tainted wheat gluten, Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology said they sold it to other companies. Who are they? Who did they sell it to?

- There is disagreement between university labs and FDA labs on the nature of the contaminate. What is that about?

This is classic "The Public has a right to know" information. Do I know for a fact that the FDA is getting pressure to drag their feet and not reveal info? No. But I do know that the critical information about this story has been dug out by concerned pet owner/bloggers and the good journalists like Andrew Bridges at the AP.

3,168 dead pets. This is NOT "Nothing to see here, move along."
Pay attention folks. Follow the money. Pay attention to the players.

UPDATE 4-8-07

Pet Connection calls it straight after a CBS reporter whines that we shouldn't be concerned about just 12 dead animals (I'm impressed he had the time to whine between his Anna Nichole Smith and Brittney shaving her head coverage!:

No one’s denying the need for honest reporting on the war in Iraq, and I can’t imagine a person who doesn’t care about the sacrifices of our fellow citizens there, or indeed about the suffering of the Iraqis who are living and dying in a war zone. But with all due respect, this is not about 12 pets (which even the FDA says there’s more than that now, although they say they’re too busy investigating to say how many more.) . . .

This isn’t about 12, 14, 16 dead pets — or even, if you extrapolate from numbers such as Oregon’s, Michigan’s, Banfield’s, the Animal Medical Center, the Veterinary Information Network or even ours, hundreds or thousands dead. (The FDA has some 12,000 complaints to investigate, more than double in a month their two-year load on all other complaints combined. . .

This is about our happenstance discovery of a vulnerability in our overall food-safety system, one that we’re fortunate to have found and to have a chance to fix before something else even bigger happens, either by accident (which this pet-food disaster may well surely end up being) or on purpose (at the hands of America’s enemies).