I had a real hankering for peanut butter cookies the other evening and, excited to have yet another excuse to procrastinate a bit longer on my homework, I prepared to head down the street to Safeway. I was on a roll when I suddenly realized that, unless I wished to make myself sick, I had to postpone satisfying my spontaneous craving. Salmonella? Thanks, but I’d rather do my homework.
There are a multitude of reasons I might opt out of purchasing a certain food item. For example, I do not buy Swiss cheese because I think it smells like dirty socks and tastes rotten. Other products lack nutrition or are too expensive, while others are simply unnecessary for the dishes I prepare. However, within the last year, the country has experienced so many bacteria outbreaks and food recalls that now, on top of everything, I have to be concerned about whether or not the products I buy are contaminated.
Is it too much to ask for the Food and Drug Administration to do its job properly and to stop withholding important information from the public? No wonder people have had so little trust in the government. The agency is renowned for its consistent cover-ups and lack of action.
The recent peanut butter recall affected products containing peanut paste and peanut butter made by the Peanut Corporation of America. According to an article in the New York Times on Jan. 28, “eight people have died and more than 500 people in 43 states, half of them children, were sickened by salmonella poisoning.” An inspection of the Georgia peanut plant revealed horrifying details such as mold on its ceilings and walls and foot-long gaps in its roof, according to the article. What’s worse, apparently even after the company realized its peanut butter was contaminated, it did not clean its equipment.
So who is at fault? Well, obviously the peanut plant. But the FDA is also to blame for not cracking down on the company sooner and rigorously enforcing the policies.
“This latest outbreak proves again that FDA is woefully inadequate to the task of protecting American consumers from unsafe food,” said the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “It presently inspects low risk peanut butter plants rarely, or not at all, leaving the job to state inspection agencies.”
This is not the first incident that could have been avoided if the FDA had been more responsible and taken action sooner. The United States has experienced so many outbreaks and recalls within the past couple of years that I’m beginning to wonder whether anything I eat is safe anymore.
Wsws.org, a Socialist Web site, posted an article listing the myriad foods that have reportedly been associated with illnesses across the nation since August 2007. Tainted spinach, lettuce, carrot juice, milk, green onions, ice cream, oysters, candy and even potato salad and cantaloupes have all been recalled at some point or another. Because the FDA does not have the authority to issue mandatory recalls, it has allegedly relied on the food industry to enforce its own “voluntary safety standards,” which have hardly been effective.
Naomi Spencer, the author of the same WSWS article, also wrote about the spinach contamination in California. Supposedly, the FDA had known about the contamination problems in the state’s Salinas Valley agricultural region for years. “A particularly virulent strain of the food borne pathogen E.coli, associated with manure and run-off from large industry cattle farms, had repeatedly been detected in spinach and other leafy green fields in the region,” Spencer wrote. Though, between 1995 and 2005, the FDA was aware of 18 outbreaks of food-borne illness related to E.coli in fresh-cut lettuce and even an additional case involving fresh-cut spinach, hundreds of people continued to get sick for lack of action. Then, Natural Selection Foods, the processor of the tainted spinach, was not even fined in the end.
The FDA’s deficiency is not only evident in its inability to handle food-related incidents – it is also prevalent in its dealings with the drug industry. For instance, a recent article in the UCLA Daily Bruin mentions the FDA’s negligence in relation to the Vioxx incident. “The FDA approved the drug, only to find that it causes heart attacks and strokes,” according to the article. “The discovery wasn’t made public, however, until after the estimated number of victims – 100,000 – grew too large to ignore.” How many people must become sick before the agency finally decides to take action?
The problem here is not insufficient funds. In fact, legislators have been providing the FDA with money – it just hasn’t been placed in the right hands. An article in Politico reveals information regarding improper distribution of the allotted funds. ‘Retention’ bonuses were reportedly created, “to keep coveted field inspectors, analysts and scientists from ditching the federal government for greener paychecks at private sector posts. But most of the money has ended up in the hands of upper-level management.”
I would like to have faith in the FDA and believe that it is taking every precaution to ensure our safety. This is the agency that essentially controls everything we put into our mouths and onto our bodies, yet it is under constant scrutiny for its inattention and shady money uses. When I take Tylenol for a headache, drink a glass of chocolate milk, or relieve my chapped hands with my Aveeno moisturizer, I shouldn’t have to worry that I could be seriously harming my body. If a product receives FDA approval, it ought to be safe to consume or apply, without question.
The FDA claims to be “Protecting and Promoting Your Health.” Let’s hope it will show more respect for this motto in the years to come.
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