Fear of Eating
hippiemom
Posts: 3,326
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: May 21, 2007
The New York Times
Yesterday I did something risky: I ate a salad.
These are anxious days at the lunch table. For all you know, there may be E. coli on your spinach, salmonella in your peanut butter and melamine in your pet’s food and, because it was in the feed, in your chicken sandwich.
Who’s responsible for the new fear of eating? Some blame globalization; some blame food-producing corporations; some blame the Bush administration. But I blame Milton Friedman.
Now, those who blame globalization do have a point. U.S. officials can’t inspect overseas food-processing plants without the permission of foreign governments — and since the Food and Drug Administration has limited funds and manpower, it can inspect only a small percentage of imports. This leaves American consumers effectively dependent on the quality of foreign food-safety enforcement. And that’s not a healthy place to be, especially when it comes to imports from China, where the state of food safety is roughly what it was in this country before the Progressive movement.
The Washington Post, reviewing F.D.A. documents, found that last month the agency detained shipments from China that included dried apples treated with carcinogenic chemicals and seafood “coated with putrefying bacteria.” You can be sure that a lot of similarly unsafe and disgusting food ends up in American stomachs.
Those who blame corporations also have a point. In 2005, the F.D.A. suspected that peanut butter produced by ConAgra, which sells the product under multiple brand names, might be contaminated with salmonella. According to The New York Times, “when agency inspectors went to the plant that made the peanut butter, the company acknowledged it had destroyed some product but declined to say why,” and refused to let the inspectors examine its records without a written authorization.
According to the company, the agency never followed through. This brings us to our third villain, the Bush administration.
Without question, America’s food safety system has degenerated over the past six years. We don’t know how many times concerns raised by F.D.A. employees were ignored or soft-pedaled by their superiors. What we do know is that since 2001 the F.D.A. has introduced no significant new food safety regulations except those mandated by Congress.
This isn’t simply a matter of caving in to industry pressure. The Bush administration won’t issue food safety regulations even when the private sector wants them. The president of the United Fresh Produce Association says that the industry’s problems “can’t be solved without strong mandatory federal regulations”: without such regulations, scrupulous growers and processors risk being undercut by competitors more willing to cut corners on food safety. Yet the administration refuses to do more than issue nonbinding guidelines.
Why would the administration refuse to regulate an industry that actually wants to be regulated? Officials may fear that they would create a precedent for public-interest regulation of other industries. But they are also influenced by an ideology that says business should never be regulated, no matter what.
The economic case for having the government enforce rules on food safety seems overwhelming. Consumers have no way of knowing whether the food they eat is contaminated, and in this case what you don’t know can hurt or even kill you. But there are some people who refuse to accept that case, because it’s ideologically inconvenient.
That’s why I blame the food safety crisis on Milton Friedman, who called for the abolition of both the food and the drug sides of the F.D.A. What would protect the public from dangerous or ineffective drugs? “It’s in the self-interest of pharmaceutical companies not to have these bad things,” he insisted in a 1999 interview. He would presumably have applied the same logic to food safety (as he did to airline safety): regardless of circumstances, you can always trust the private sector to police itself.
O.K., I’m not saying that Mr. Friedman directly caused tainted spinach and poisonous peanut butter. But he did help to make our food less safe, by legitimizing what the historian Rick Perlstein calls “E. coli conservatives”: ideologues who won’t accept even the most compelling case for government regulation.
Earlier this month the administration named, you guessed it, a “food safety czar.” But the food safety crisis isn’t caused by the arrangement of the boxes on the organization chart. It’s caused by the dominance within our government of a literally sickening ideology.
Published: May 21, 2007
The New York Times
Yesterday I did something risky: I ate a salad.
These are anxious days at the lunch table. For all you know, there may be E. coli on your spinach, salmonella in your peanut butter and melamine in your pet’s food and, because it was in the feed, in your chicken sandwich.
Who’s responsible for the new fear of eating? Some blame globalization; some blame food-producing corporations; some blame the Bush administration. But I blame Milton Friedman.
Now, those who blame globalization do have a point. U.S. officials can’t inspect overseas food-processing plants without the permission of foreign governments — and since the Food and Drug Administration has limited funds and manpower, it can inspect only a small percentage of imports. This leaves American consumers effectively dependent on the quality of foreign food-safety enforcement. And that’s not a healthy place to be, especially when it comes to imports from China, where the state of food safety is roughly what it was in this country before the Progressive movement.
The Washington Post, reviewing F.D.A. documents, found that last month the agency detained shipments from China that included dried apples treated with carcinogenic chemicals and seafood “coated with putrefying bacteria.” You can be sure that a lot of similarly unsafe and disgusting food ends up in American stomachs.
Those who blame corporations also have a point. In 2005, the F.D.A. suspected that peanut butter produced by ConAgra, which sells the product under multiple brand names, might be contaminated with salmonella. According to The New York Times, “when agency inspectors went to the plant that made the peanut butter, the company acknowledged it had destroyed some product but declined to say why,” and refused to let the inspectors examine its records without a written authorization.
According to the company, the agency never followed through. This brings us to our third villain, the Bush administration.
Without question, America’s food safety system has degenerated over the past six years. We don’t know how many times concerns raised by F.D.A. employees were ignored or soft-pedaled by their superiors. What we do know is that since 2001 the F.D.A. has introduced no significant new food safety regulations except those mandated by Congress.
This isn’t simply a matter of caving in to industry pressure. The Bush administration won’t issue food safety regulations even when the private sector wants them. The president of the United Fresh Produce Association says that the industry’s problems “can’t be solved without strong mandatory federal regulations”: without such regulations, scrupulous growers and processors risk being undercut by competitors more willing to cut corners on food safety. Yet the administration refuses to do more than issue nonbinding guidelines.
Why would the administration refuse to regulate an industry that actually wants to be regulated? Officials may fear that they would create a precedent for public-interest regulation of other industries. But they are also influenced by an ideology that says business should never be regulated, no matter what.
The economic case for having the government enforce rules on food safety seems overwhelming. Consumers have no way of knowing whether the food they eat is contaminated, and in this case what you don’t know can hurt or even kill you. But there are some people who refuse to accept that case, because it’s ideologically inconvenient.
That’s why I blame the food safety crisis on Milton Friedman, who called for the abolition of both the food and the drug sides of the F.D.A. What would protect the public from dangerous or ineffective drugs? “It’s in the self-interest of pharmaceutical companies not to have these bad things,” he insisted in a 1999 interview. He would presumably have applied the same logic to food safety (as he did to airline safety): regardless of circumstances, you can always trust the private sector to police itself.
O.K., I’m not saying that Mr. Friedman directly caused tainted spinach and poisonous peanut butter. But he did help to make our food less safe, by legitimizing what the historian Rick Perlstein calls “E. coli conservatives”: ideologues who won’t accept even the most compelling case for government regulation.
Earlier this month the administration named, you guessed it, a “food safety czar.” But the food safety crisis isn’t caused by the arrangement of the boxes on the organization chart. It’s caused by the dominance within our government of a literally sickening ideology.
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." ~ MLK, 1963
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Try eating a salad prepared by traditional Bedouin villagers in a desert shack, and spend the next three weeks shitting your guts out. I think food safety in america will seem pretty good after that. . .
-C Addison
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
R.i.p. My Dad - May 28, 2007
R.i.p. Black Tail (cat) - Sept. 20, 2008
EDIT: Us economists really have to stop blaming Milton Friedman for every mistake we make
indeed!
easy in the summer...not so easy in the off-seasons.
however, who in the hell has EVER gotten any produce from china? seriously? if our pruduce isn't local...it's usually from florida, california...mexico...chile....spain.......etc.
and hello? wash your food. easy. i eat a TON of fruit, and i simply run it all under water for a few minutes in a colander, shaking the basket...and, good enough. most of our veggies we eat get cooked, at the least steamed..so again, good enough. salad sure, we do buy bagged and in the past there were some bad issues, but i think far better now...and yea, i just can't worry about it all.
however, in real relation to the article, that's just sad. it's funny really, you always hear dems being called 'tax and spend liberals' which at least foots the bill for the things they want to spend funds on.....but honestly, it seems to me the republicans in power, maybe they're not raising taxes....they are just getting us more and more heavily in debt...but spending our money not on US...but elsewhere, and where most of us don't even want to be, and then cutting services at home left and right.....:o
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
-C Addison
That's what we do here in the southern US!
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
aha! the truth comes out, the REAL reason pearl jam isn't touring the south: they are biased against fried food.
mea culpa...i just couldn't help myself.
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
Ha ha! And we cook our veggies for hours! Cook all the good stuff out.........I adore fried seafood.
Oh, and sometimes we like a little Tea with our sugar!
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
I can't go a day without my sweet iced tea!
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Definitely more challenging - basically you eat seasonally - there's a reason for squash and carrots and apples in the winter, and lettuce in the summer. Squash and such store really well. I don't grow our own produce the way I used to, but for a time I did, and bought local apples/onions (still do that). A cellar helps with storage.
R.i.p. My Dad - May 28, 2007
R.i.p. Black Tail (cat) - Sept. 20, 2008
*~You're IT Bert!~*
Hold on to the thread
The currents will shift
yes, but with the plethora of fresh produce available year round, it is just far too tempting to me to pass up...b/c the winter season doesn't offer enough for me. so, i simply wash my produce well.
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
Actually, from the food safety point of view, organic is the worst. Food spoilage is much more dangerous than additives or pesticides. Organic food is much more prone to spoilage and doe snot store or keep well at all.
Anyone who has ever had food poinooing can confirm this, including me, who got staph from lobster in a Fiji resort.
GIve me metabisulphite over St Anthony's Fire any day !!
Incidentally, all food is organic, we can't actually digest inorganic matter !!
i love this guy. and i love this bit
in prison, before they give you the lethal injection, they swab your arm with alcohol"
Well, I guess if you're a big fan of Twinkies and other highly processed foods you might have a problem.
Edit: not really sure what you're getting at with the lobster. Lobster is lobster.
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