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Current News |
You’re Eating That?
Published: November 26, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/opinion/26mon1.html?ex=1196744400&en=79d5bce6
cd72f3b2&ei=5070&emc=eta1
A few years ago Americans walked into
the grocery store and plucked items from
the shelves with a confidence that the
world could only envy. Now, according to
a survey for the Food Marketing
Institute, only 66 percent of consumers
in the
United States are confident that the
food they buy is safe, down from 82
percent last year. With news of killer
spinach, tainted hamburger patties and
imported seafood that can provide as
many toxins as omega-3s, who can blame
them?
Food safety, like toy safety, is part of
a growing national concern that
government agencies that are supposed to
protect consumers have been whittled
down to incompetence. The Bush
administration insists it is focusing on
import
safety — finally. Congress must keep
pressing for a complete overhaul of the
consumer protection system. Each day
there is news of another dangerous hole
in
the consumer safety net.
USA Today pointed out a particularly
glaring problem last week. The private
laboratories that test foods from
companies on the government’s “import
alert
list” cannot automatically report
tainted food to the Food and Drug
Administration. Instead, they must give
their reports to the importer who is
paying for the test. If a shipment fails
one laboratory’s test, some importers
have switched to a less-reputable
laboratory to get the tainted foodstuff
through. That cannot be allowed. When
labs find a batch of food with too much
pesticide or salmonella or worse, they
should be required to alert the F.D.A.,
not hope the companies will come clean
for them.
The F.D.A. needs to follow through on
promises to determine which companies
abroad are more trustworthy and which
require closer scrutiny. One quick
solution would be to immediately require
accreditation of private laboratories
through the International Standards
Organization. The best labs would
welcome
that certification.
The government should also require
importers to announce which laboratory
they
will use in advance so that there can be
no switching later. And some of the
additional money from Congress should go
to updating the F.D.A.’s own equipment
for random or follow-up testing and to
develop a system to more efficiently
track data about imports, companies and
their past performance.
After years of mollycoddling the
industry, the Bush administration needs
to
start protecting America’s consumers.
Many members of the food industry now
understand that they are losing their
customers’ confidence, which means
they’re in danger of losing their
business.
The Food Marketing Institute — with
1,500 members, including major grocery
chains and wholesalers — is calling for
new rules that would allow the
government to recall any food shipment
if the producer or importer hesitates.
That makes sense to us. Americans need
to be a lot more confident that what is
on sale at the corner grocery is safe
enough to eat. |
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