Improving Food Safety
I have to admit that my first thought upon reading this article was “I can’t wait to see how the Senate kills this idea!”
The bill, introduced by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), would give the Food and Drug Administration broad new enforcement tools, including the authority to recall tainted food, the ability to “quarantine” suspect food, and the power to impose civil penalties and increased criminal sanctions on violators.
Among other things, the proposal would put greater responsibility on growers, manufacturers and food handlers by requiring them to identify contamination risks, document the steps they take to prevent them and provide those records to federal regulators. The legislation also would allow the FDA to require private laboratories used by food manufacturers to report the detection of pathogens in food products directly to the government.
That comes via Hilzoy who reminds us of Rick Perlstein’s coinage “e coli conservatism.” But even if we assume a bill along these lines can be passed and signed into law, which hopefully will happen, my understanding is that the larger issue in the background here is often regulatory capture. Too often the critical agencies charged with overseeing aspects of the nation’s food supply have come to see food producers, rather than the broad mass of people, as their agencies’ key clients. What’s needed, beyond specific new legislative matters, is some action from the top of the executive branch aimed at shaping the culture deeper in the agencies.
15 Responses to “Improving Food Safety”
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May 29th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
If Congress writes the relevant laws in the right way, agencies can also be policied through civil actions in the federal courts.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Let’s not forget that “free market” zealots like Newt have openly advocated for the abolition of the FDA and the elimination of any Federal oversight into food safety. The sneaky thing is that by pushing lawsuit caps along with the abolition of safety oversight, the “free market” crowd is providing protection to food companies from having any accountability for making people sick.
May 29th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Use irradiation in our food supply and none of this is necessary. But that would be too easy.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Too often the critical agencies charged with overseeing aspects of the nation’s food supply have come to see food producers, rather than the broad mass of people, as their agencies’ key clients. What’s needed, beyond specific new legislative matters, is some action from the top of the executive branch aimed at shaping the culture deeper in the agencies.
Part of this phenomenon arises from poor implementation of the sensible notions that (i) there ought to be metrics by which the performance of government agencies can be measured, and (ii) citizens and businesses should not find dealing with government agencies to be unreasonably difficult (e.g., if you have a legitimate question, someone should be returning your phone call). If an agency’s implementation of these common sense ideas turns into “We’ll measure our success by how much the people we regulate like us,” that’s a problem.
For example, IIRC, the Clinton-era U.S. Patent & Trademark Office called patent applicants “its customers” and measured its success by how many patents were granted. While it is certainly a good idea for the PTO to be procedurally accommodating to patent applicants, and it is also a good idea for the PTO to act promptly on patent applications, it is not a good idea for the PTO to measure its success by the number of patents that it grants.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Depending on how they write the bill, this could represent a huge new problem for small and local producers. Currently, USDA is used by the large corporate factory food producers to impose ridiculous constraints on exactly the kind of operations that supply farmers’ markets and are part of the local food movement. For instance, a milk farmer in VA was put out of business last year because USDA tried to force him to put in 24″ curbs at his delivery location. Another example … slaughterhouses need to have a *separate* bathroom for USDA inspectors. Regs like this are designed to ensure food safety but are more often than not applied to the little guys who can least afford it.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Um, yeah. And this is just another example of that happening. The purpose of this bill is to raise the costs of small producers and thus increase the economies of scale of large producers. Sort of like the CPSIA (you might ask yourself: why were Mattel and Hasbro the two biggest forces lobbying for that bill?).
May 29th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
On the contrary, they’re designed by lobbyists specifically to raise costs. They need to be facially plausible as food safety requirements, but the idea is to force small producers out of business.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
What is the FDA going to use for money?
Under Bush the FDA budget was dwindling. Broad new enforcement powers don’t mean jack without a budget to carry them out.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I (uninformedly) think you’re blaming the wrong level of government, Jeff. If the agents of the Bush FDA were serving the interests of Aramark and the like, it doesn’t mean that Democratic legislation will also serve those interests.
I think we’ve pretty obviously reverted to food-safety levels of the late 19th century (think about THAT!). Reinstating effective New Deal measures should have the same positive effects as they did then.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Obviously? I’m actually sympathetic to the *theory* that Bush might have screwed up the FDA (just look what he did to FEMA), but just looking around a little at things like annual deaths from food-borne illness, it looks like very little has changed in the last ten years. And it would take more than a few missed cases of Salmonella to get us back to the 19th century.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
This post reminds me of something that Charles Wheelan said in his great book “Naked Economics”. He said that in order to have a free market system ,you need bureaucrats. And that a bureaucracy that is too weak actually hurts the free market.
Sadly , this is something that many republicans overlook nowdays.
I do not want to live under a dictatorship. That does not mean that i want the police department abolished!That would not make me feel safer , or more free!The oppisite of socialism should not be anarchy, or complete lack of government. Too many republicans seem to be aiming for zero government .
Teddy Roosevelt was a republican. But he understood that one of the governments most basic tasks is to look after our public lands and national parks. Keeping food production system safe would seem to me as a basic government duty. And I say this as a free market conservative.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Yeah, I overstated. Early 1930s is probably more appropriate.
Then again, I say that obesity is a food safety issue, and I expect that we’ll find intentionally addictive additives in Coke, Frito-Lay, and McDonald’s. I mean, Coke’s already addictive.
Also, not everything is Bush’s fault. FDA rollback (and especially government contempt for consumer safety) starts with Reagan–and is still going strong under Obama.
May 29th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Obviousely the republicans are anti-government.But they certainly spend a lot on government when they want to.
I think that the biggest problem today is that we spend a lot of money on big ticket items ,and ignore the nuts and bolts of running this country.
In Iraq our troops were lacking basic equipment , but we had billion dollar weapons systems being used.This happens all throughout the government.
Our National Parks are also starved for funds.
Our congressmen tend to support big ticket items that will get them attention and votes.But they tend to ignore the basic stuff.Obviously there are some politicians who are exceptions to this rule.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Re jeff
Does Mr. jeff remember the peanut butter fiasco earlier this year? How a small producer cost Kellogg a bundle by selling them tainted peanut butter which caused a giant recall of Kellogg products.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:36 am
I’m not sure what this accomplishes other than to give minimum-wage workers more paperwork to do, documenting what times they wash their hands.
And before someone says this isn’t what the regulations will require, they should ask anyone complying with Sarbanes-Oxley about documenting who has keys to the broom closet.