Somewhere in health class I learned that the key to prevention is education. Food manufacturers did not take the same health class, or else 25 percent of them would have known that there's a federal law (and not even a new one!) that requires them to keep track of suppliers.
A report prepared by the Department of Health and Human Services says it surveyed numerous food merchants about its sources and the results are scary. As the New York Times reports:
It's because many of these companies didn't follow the law in the first place that products shipped by the Peanut Corporation of America are still being recalled two months later. It also brings into question what good will be accomplished by new laws like COOL if the FDA is too short-handed to enforce old ones.Of those 118
firms, 70 failed to provide investigators with required information
about suppliers or customers, with 6 of the companies failing to
provide any information at all. One vendor told investigators
that it kept no records of tomato purchases. Tomatoes have repeatedly
been implicated in nationwide food contamination scares, including one last year. Fifteen facilities told investigators they mixed raw products from more than 10 farms.
In 2007, the agency tried to close down more than half of its testing
labs to save money, which kicked up a "firestorm" of controversy. As the AP reported at the time, "FDA's
staff can conduct only a cursory review of imports, generally
dedicating just 30 seconds to each shipment as it flashes by on a
computer screen."
The FDA's other argument to close the labs
was that they were compromised by merchants. "Investigative counsel
Kevin Barstow said he
was told by an unnamed FDA deputy lab director that "none of the test
results he's seen are completely accurate.... The words he used were 'not good' and 'spooky.'"
In
some ways, this is a wonderful time for the FDA to ask for money
because the government is spending and both sides agree that the food
system in America needs an overhaul. On the other hand, as the peanut
butter salmonella cases subside and the controversy disappears, it may
seem too easy to pronounce the FDA "fixed" just because it's had
several months without an epidemic. Right now, there are lots of words about changing the FDA. Hopefully action is not far behind.
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