The
government's new effort to strengthen its weak inspection system for imported
food isn't going to cover everything we eat from foreign countries.
In a 1968 comedy
called The Secret War of Harry Frigg, Paul Newman is captured
during World War II in Italy. After the prisoner of war spends several weeks
trying to escape, his captor tells him some great news: The guards now have
bullets in their guns.
The Food and Drug
Administration news about food safety reminds me all too much of this scene.
Guess what? They’re now going to start trying to make sure our imported food is
safe!
“Under the proposed
regulations…U.S. importers would, for the first time, have a clearly defined
responsibility to verify that their suppliers produce food to meet U.S. food
safety requirements,” reads the agency’s press release.
Let me translate this:
The guardians of our food supply now have bullets in their guns.
Imported foods make up
one fifth of the vegetables, half of the fruits, and more
than 90 percent of the seafood we eat. The odds are that some of the food you eat is
imported. And while Greek olives and French cheese sound divine, how about
Chinese tilapia or Vietnamese catfish that ate human feces as part of their
diet?
Yep, that’s gross, but
I’m not making it up. When I reported on the safety of imported seafood, the
experts I interviewed described fish farms in China where the family outhouse
flows directly into the tilapia pond.
The most outrageous
part of the imported seafood story happens at U.S. borders and ports, where
imported food enters our country. We can’t control whether other countries
think human waste is an acceptable fish food, nor can we control whether they
enforce their own laws. But — in theory at least — we do control what we allow
into the U.S. market.
Unfortunately, our
government inspects less than 2 percent of the seafood we import — a much
smaller percent than either the EU or Japan. Even the Government
Accountability Office says our system
is lousy.
And when the
inspectors find filthy, rotting, or contaminated seafood? They don’t destroy
it, they just give it back to the importers. The importers are then free to
bring it in through another port, where there’s a 98 percent chance it won’t be
inspected.
Nowadays, many foods
have country-of-origin labeling, so you can choose to avoid imported foods from
certain countries when you’re shopping at the store. But you won’t have the
same option when dining out, because restaurants are exempt.
Labeling is only a
partial solution. We need real food safety. And that means a regulatory system
that works.
Our federal food
safety system is a convoluted mess overseen by a number of different departments and
agencies. Marion Nestle,
author of Safe Food, famously pointed out the ridiculous nature of
the system, noting that one agency regulates cheese pizza but another one
regulates pepperoni. Corn dogs and bagel dogs are regulated by different
agencies. So are liquid beef broth and chicken broth.
Meanwhile, many small
farmers see the government as a bully who lets large corporations with
intimidating legal teams off the hook yet focuses its “food safety” efforts on
small, sustainable farmers who are less capable of fighting back.
Just ask Vernon
Hershberger. He’s an Amish farmer who got
in trouble for selling
wholesome (yet illegal) foods to 200 members of a private food-buying club —
and his food never made anyone sick.
How does it serve the
public interest for the government to crack down on farmers like Hershberger
while allowing imported foods into the country even when we know they come from
countries that frequently produce unsafe food?
Let’s hope these new
regulations on imported foods do the trick. But even if they do, they won’t
cover all imported foods. The new system will only cover imported food that’s
regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. In other words, only some of the
guards now have bullets in their guns.
OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is the author
of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do
to Fix It. OtherWords.org