Americans are asking themselves where their food comes from after contaminated pet food with ingredients from China killed thousands of dogs and cats. The tainted ingredients also found their way into feed for chickens, hogs and farm-raised fish.
Food safety experts say the contaminated ingredients have the potential to find their way into the human food supply. Critics say government agencies responsible for overseeing imported food products need more funding to thoroughly inspect food.
At the University, Food Services has not pulled any products from dining halls.
Pet food made with contaminated wheat gluten from China was recently mixed into feed used on 30 broiler chicken farms in Indiana, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Food and Drug Administration said there is no evidence that humans have suffered any health problems after eating the processed products made from the hogs and poultry.
The FDA needs to take a closer look at products that come from overseas, said Sarah Klein with the Food Safety Program at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit food policy lobbying group.
The USDA, which examines poultry, is responsible for 20 percent of America’s food supply and visually inspects food imports, Klein said. Inspectors look in boxes or take chemical samples about 15 percent of the time.
The FDA, on the other hand, inspected about 1 percent of the 8.9 million imported food shipments in 2006, according to the agency.
“The problem is unfortunate that neither of these food safety inspection agencies has enough money,” Klein said. “It’s not that they don’t want to. They’re not choosing to make these huge gaps in the food safety net, but they just don’t have the funds.”
The FDA needs more funding to hire more inspectors, said Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women & Families. She also wrote a report calling for FDA reform.
“The agency doesn’t have enough money to pay inspectors to make sure these foods coming in are what they say they are,” Zuckerman said.
Foreign food manufacturers can potentially ship dangerous products across international borders and resell items before they arrive to the U.S. to hide the country of origin, she said.
“There’s not much incentive for them to make sure the product is safe because they know they won’t get caught,” Zuckerman said.
The contaminated ingredients from China haven’t had any impact on the human food supply, according to the FDA.
“The product that came in could have been destined for something else,” Klein said. “That’s the concern.”
Klein said theories have been raised that as the food system becomes global, food products are traveling greater distances, increasing health risks. Food products have the potential to not be refrigerated during shipping, for example.
Klein said more food outbreaks may not be happening compared with 15 years ago, but technology is better able to track where outbreaks are coming from.
“Even 15 years ago, we might not have been able to see this,” she said.
Tom Driscoll, Food Services director for University Housing, said the food scare hasn’t affected the thousands of different food products the University purchases. He said his department typically looks for guidance from food safety agencies.
“We would normally get some sort of warning from the FDA or another agency, a vendor, or manufacturer themself might issue a recall,” Driscoll said.
Zuckerman said consumers should be more concerned with their food purchases. She recommended buying local products from farmers markets or asking grocers which products are local. Zuckerman also said to wash fruit and vegetables in running water with soap.
Klein said she hopes the federal government passes the Safe Food Act of 2007, which would create a single agency responsible for ensuring food safety. Right now, she said, food safety agencies have overlapping duties.
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