Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (52 page)

2009: Nestlé’s Toll House Cookie Dough
(E. coli
O157:H7)
. This outbreak demonstrated the inadequacy of warning labels and the compelling need for preventive controls. Cookie dough is not supposed to be eaten raw; it is intended to be baked. Packages are labeled with warnings, usually along the lines of “Bake before enjoying” or, as Nestlé’s post-recall packages now say, “Do not consume raw cookie dough.” But let’s be honest: raw cookie dough is irresistibly delicious. A
Consumer Reports
survey found that 39 percent of respondents admitted to eating dough when they make cookies; surely this underestimates the true percentage.
⁴⁸

Companies know that customers eat raw dough. Nestlé said it took special precautions as a result, and investigators were able to identify only minor violations at the plant. Although they found
E. coli
O157:H7 in one dough sample, it was not the outbreak strain. Investigations linked cases of illness to eating the Nestlé dough, but “conclusions could not be made with regard to the root cause of the contamination.” The recall cost Nestlé more than $30 million.
⁴⁹

To people who became ill after eating raw cookie dough, unsolved mysteries and corporate costs hardly matter. Bill Marler, the lawyer mentioned
earlier, describes another client: “I spent most of last week being supportive, but feeling helpless, as a client who ate
E. coli
O157:H7–tainted Nestlé Toll House Cookie Dough, may well be slowly dying after spending over 100 days in the hospital (still there), losing her large intestine and gall bladder, and spending weeks on dialysis. It is crazy that people think a foodborne illness is a ‘tummy ache.’ ”
⁵⁰

2009: Ground Beef (Antibiotic-Resistant
Salmonella
)
. Throughout the summer of 2009, Colorado health officials were dealing with cases of
Salmonella
infections caused by eating ground beef. The most serious were caused by a strain of
Salmonella
Newport highly resistant to a wide range of common antibiotics. Investigators traced the illnesses to ground beef produced by Beef Packers, Inc., a subsidiary of Cargill. The nearly 826,000-pound recall was especially complicated because the company repackaged the meat into small retail-size units. The USDA’s list of receiving retailers fills twenty-four pages.
⁵¹

Beyond generic food safety, this incident raised concerns about additional public health issues: humane treatment of animals, the safety of school meals, and antibiotic resistance in food pathogens. A year earlier, USDA investigators had observed workers at this plant using cattle prods to render animals unconscious so they could be dragged into the slaughterhouse. Use of cattle prods is legal; dragging unconscious and potentially contaminated animals is not. Cargill said “the animals balked because there were too many auditors present that day.”
⁵²
Even if true, a statement like this is unlikely to reassure anyone that the meat is safe.

Beef Packers is a major supplier of meat to the USDA’s school lunch program. The recall covered meat sent to retailers, not schools. Investigative reporters for
USA Today
discovered that while the recall was in progress, the USDA bought 450,000 pounds of ground beef produced by Beef Packers during the dates covered by the recall and sent several lots to schools. The USDA knew that Beef Packers had a history of positive
Salmonella
tests, but did not disclose that information. An official told
USA Today
that if it did, it “would discourage companies from contracting to supply product for the National School Lunch Program and hamper our ability to provide safe and nutritious foods to American school children.
⁵³

As for antibiotic resistance: in this instance, the USDA was faced with a new possibility. Could the agency consider antibiotic-resistant
Salmonella
to be an adulterant, thereby making the meat subject to immediate
recall? In August, an official announced to a meat industry conference that the USDA still considered
E. coli
O157:H7 to be an adulterant and was considering other such controls, some of them involving
Salmonella
. This was a warning that the new administration at the USDA—if not its inspectors—also intended to take foodborne illness more seriously.
⁵⁴

The multiple antibiotic resistance of this
Salmonella
strain raised particular alarms. As discussed in
chapters 1
and
6
, most antibiotics in the United States are fed to farm animals for nontherapeutic purposes, a practice that selects for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This problem was the focus of a Pew Commission investigation (in which I participated), which recommended immediate reduction in the use of nontherapeutic antibiotics in animal agriculture.
⁵⁵

Congress considered legislation, but the meat industry opposed it. The American Meat Institute said restrictions on antibiotic use “will jeopardize the industry’s ability to protect animal health, animal welfare and the food supply.” A coalition of twenty meat producer organizations wrote the White House that antibiotics were vital to livestock and poultry production, and restrictions “are not supported by any conclusive scientific evidence.” The American Veterinary Medical Association also opposed restrictions. The Pew report, it said, “contains significant flaws and major deviations from both science and reality. These missteps lead to dangerous and under-informed recommendations about the nature of our food system—and shocking recommendations for interventions that are scarcely commensurate with risk.”
⁵⁶
Despite the evident importance of antibiotics to human health, self-interest politics makes this issue—as well as the others discussed here—difficult to resolve.

Taken together, these incidents ought to have provided all the evidence Congress might need to enact food safety legislation. Collectively, they demonstrate that without such legislation, food companies are likely to continue to cut safety corners, lobby against having to produce food safely, and collude with federal agencies to overlook safety hazards—regardless of threats to public health. And because animal wastes (USDA-regulated) are the ultimate source of pathogens on leafy greens and raw cookie dough (FDA-regulated), these incidents also argue for regulation by one agency, not two.

In 2004, Tommy Thompson announced his resignation as secretary of health and human services with these now famous words: “I, for the life
of me, cannot understand why terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do.” Fears of bioterrorism induced Congress to require the FDA to implement rules about registration and import shipments, but that was all.
⁵⁷

You might think, as I do, that the surest way to prevent food bioterrorism would be to enact a comprehensive food safety system. Such a system would not only protect against microbial biohazards, but also those that might be posed by old and new technologies such as mercury in fish from coal-burning power plants, the cloning of food animals, genetic modification of animals and fish, chemicals leaching from plastics, and nanotechnology.

You also might think that the recent spate of outbreaks and recalls would have induced Congress to take action. In 2007, Michael Taylor told Congress, “The sad truth is that we have no system for managing multi-state foodborne illness outbreaks. . . . Congress must act to solve this problem.” How? By enacting what food safety advocates in and out of government had been recommending for years: a single food agency responsible for overseeing mandatory HACCP (or its euphemistic equivalent, “preventive controls”) for all foods, from farm to table.
⁵⁸

With Congress unwilling to take on this challenge, the alternative is to try a stepwise approach, beginning with fixing the FDA. In the wake of the 2007 pet food recalls, the FDA’s Science Board released a scathing report on the agency’s lack of scientific and financial resources. It pointed out that from 1988 to 2007, Congress had enacted 123 statutes that increased the FDA’s regulatory responsibilities but granted few additional resources. The FDA issued a Food Protection Plan attempting to set forth priorities but almost everything it suggested would require new legislation. Even so, critics of the plan such as Michael Taylor pointed out that it failed to treat food safety as a farm-to-table problem or to hold the food industry responsible and accountable.
⁵⁹

At the time he made these statements, Taylor was a professor at George Washington University. Because of his previous connection to Monsanto, antibiotechnology advocates considered him the prime example of how the revolving door favors corporate over public interests. In 2009, despite such concerns, he was reappointed to the FDA with responsibility for implementing whatever food safety legislation Congress chose to enact. Congress was considering bills aimed at fixing the FDA. Because of Taylor’s work in the mid-1990s, the USDA’s rules did not need much fixing; they mostly needed to be enforced.

In the interim, the FDA did what it could to unblock regulations put
on hold by the previous administration. In 2009, it implemented rules for shell eggs first proposed in 2004, issued guidance (still voluntary) for melons, tomatoes, and leafy greens, and speeded up its warning systems. It also showed hopeful signs of collaborating with the USDA on common food safety problems. The USDA does not usually deal with the safety of leafy greens, for example, but large growers asked the USDA to establish a marketing agreement to “facilitate the practical application” of the FDA voluntary guidance. Producers who signed on to the agreement would be obliged to follow GMPs. This might appear to be real progress, but never underestimate politics. Small growers strongly opposed the marketing agreement on the grounds that adhering to GMPs puts them at a competitive disadvantage.
⁶⁰

Overall, safety practices remain voluntary as of early 2010. For mandatory food safety, Congress would have to act. As this book goes to press, creating a food safety system that unites the functions of the FDA and the USDA seems politically unfeasible. Instead, Congress seems likely to pass legislation designed to strengthen the FDA. The bills authorize the FDA to require science-based (HACCP-like) safety standards for all foods from farm to table, and to demand recalls, retain contaminated products, and conduct other long-awaited enforcement measures. As might be expected, these bills were vigorously opposed by industrial food producers. But they also were opposed by producers of local, organic, and sustainable foods who, understandably, wanted regulations more appropriate to their smaller scale of operations.
⁶¹

No matter how these issues resolve, the proposed legislation falls far short of what is needed. The many industry critics of a unified food safety system argue that a single agency and mandatory requirements will not end foodborne illness; as long as humans prepare food, accidents will happen. Yes, but the single agency idea is worth pursuing because neither the separate agencies nor voluntary actions by food companies have been able to prevent more frequent and deadly outbreaks. We only have one food system, and it makes sense to put one agency in charge of it. At issue is how to achieve an effective food safety system. For this, we need a much higher level of public dread and outrage. It is time for food safety to join the food revolution.

IN WRITING THIS BOOK, I TRIED TO MAKE THE SCIENTIFIC ISSUES
accessible to general readers, omitting technical details but retaining accuracy. The purpose of this appendix is to provide a bit more information about the underlying science of food biotechnology. Although it is not necessary to know very much about this science in order to understand its political implications, a grasp of fundamental concepts, approaches, and interpretations can help bridge the gap between science-based and value-based approaches to evaluating risk. At the very least, this information helps to explain why some scientists have difficulty understanding public distrust of genetically engineered foods.

Science has much to teach us about the biological and physical worlds we inhabit, and its methods and approaches are useful tools for investigating such matters. The basic concepts are not difficult to understand, but the methods—and especially the vocabulary—can be intimidating. Here, I extend the discussion of plant biotechnology given in
chapter 5
and offer further details, still nontechnical, about the methods used to introduce new genes into plants, particularly those for synthesis of beta-carotene in Golden Rice. Let’s begin with a brief overview of basic biological principles having to do with DNA and its functions in bacteria and plants.

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the principal determinant of the genetic characteristics of most living organisms: humans, animals, plants, bacteria, and many viruses. One of its functions is to specify the structure of proteins. The details of the processes through which DNA reproduces itself and carries out its functions appear immensely complicated—always a good sign that they are incompletely understood. They are also abstract. DNA and proteins are submicroscopic; their actions must be inferred. Furthermore, scientists (like specialists in any field) typically describe molecular actions in a vocabulary impenetrable to the uninitiated.
¹
Fortunately, we need to use only a few of the most familiar terms: DNA and its subunits (DNA bases, of which there are 4), and protein and its subunits (amino acids, of which there are 20).
²

No matter what organism it comes from, DNA is composed of just four subunits—the DNA bases. These differ in size and shape and are arranged on the DNA molecule like beads on a string. The
sequence
of stringing constitutes a four-letter code that contains the genetic information of the cells that make up body organs and tissues. To summarize the basic details: