AT HOME HE'S A TOURIST

"Unhappy Meal"
by Jason Pancake

A common theme in government is that politicians have thrived thanks to the general political apathy of the American public. It’s natural for people to be concerned with their day to day lives and with their entertainment. For example, unless an average person or someone close to them is actually in a desert in Iraq, he or she doesn’t have a direct connection with the war. Even though the earth is warming at a dangerous rate, since it doesn’t affect us on a day to day basis, we just turn up the A/C and sit in our idling cars during rush hours. After all, we’ll be in bigger trouble today if we don’t show up for work. There are things that make people take action when they directly affect them such as illnesses, credit card interest rates, or easy access to firearms, but what about something that affects pretty much everybody?

Do you eat food? Do you like food? I sure do. Well according to news reports this past week, it looks like many

shipments of tainted food have been coming into the US from places such as China on a regular basis. According to the news report, “Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical. Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics. Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria. Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides. These were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month.” If you add up the facts, it is pretty clear: Large volume of food imported cheaply from China + Low safety standards in China + Not enough FDA inspectors to check imports = Tainted food possibly ending up on your plate.

There is no need to panic and avoid all food products or switch over to the Britney Diet of Cheetos and Pepsi. However, this is a part of a larger trend. A few weeks ago, I wrote about Susan Dudley who would like to do away with all government regulations (including FDA food safety issues) yet who was appointed under the radar to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Paul Krugman of the New York Times has an interesting article about how food safety regulation has gone downhill in the last six years. Not coincidentally, the Bush Administration has been unwilling to step up food and drug safety regulations/inspection standards because in general, their policy is against the government regulation of other businesses or industries.

The argument of free market supporters, such as in the Bush Administration, is that corporations would check themselves because it’s bad for business when your customers get sick. In theory, that sounds very logical, but then again, in theory communism also sounds pretty good. The business world is tough. If there is an option where your company can cheaply import food products but a few people could possibly get sick, in a business sense, it is much more profitable to take the cheap imports.

An article written by a former FDA Deputy Commissioner describes how the increase in imports and new technology makes inspecting such a difficult job. These days, it is so easy to get products distributed and supplied to stores that there are a lot of new risks. According to the article, “FDA processed 15 million shipments of goods in 2006, up 60% since 2003. Products from more than 230 countries and more than 300,000 manufacturers…Against this, the FDA has about 625 inspectors for food and 260 for pill-type drugs.” So if you do the math (15 million shipments divided by (625 food inspectors + 260 pill inspectors), then that means that each inspector would have to check 16,950 shipments a year. Good luck with that.

There’s not exactly an easy solution to this, but it is clear that not much has been done in the last several years despite the massive increase in products (especially food) that have been imported. So far, the food issue is unfortunately looking like another public case of “I’ll wait until something happens to me.” As with everything that is going poorly right now, that is exactly what the Administration is counting on.