Even under normal conditions, as the latest tainted chicken
scare illustrates, we're giving food safety short shrift.
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| David Guo’s Master/Flickr |
Thanks to the
shutdown, the government is doing less to protect Americans from foodborne
pathogens and deal with the aftermath of outbreaks.
The timing couldn’t be
worse.
Ten days after the
shutdown began, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that
317 people in 20 states and Puerto Rico had confirmed cases of salmonella from
Foster Farms chicken.
Although 42 percent of them had to be hospitalized,
thankfully none had died by that point.
The CDC had to bring
30 furloughed employees in its food-borne division back to work to cope with the
Foster Farms situation. The Food and Drug Administration has furloughed the
majority of its 1,602 investigators.
The first known
salmonella cases from this latest bout of bad chicken occurred in March. They
continued through at least late September. That means consumers bought and ate
contaminated meat for at least seven months before they learned that something
might be amiss.
Since it takes a few
weeks to report and confirm a new case, it’s likely more people will get sick
than the early numbers indicated. The CDC didn’t announce the discovery of this
outbreak until October 7. How many people still have tainted chicken in their
freezer and plan to eat it in the future? Do you?
This salmonella strain
is resistant to several commonly prescribed antibiotics. What happens when your
doctor can’t help you because the drugs no longer work?
This problem isn’t
limited to Foster Farms. We regularly experience salmonella and E. coli
outbreaks. Americans get sick and die from food they eat every single year.
When many outbreaks sicken hundreds of people in numerous states, we have a
flawed system.
Food safety lawyer
Bill Marler recently posted a
long list of antibiotic-resistant salmonella outbreaks on Food Safety News.
Nearly every single year, cases come to light after making consumers sick. His
list, which doesn’t take into account outbreaks from E. coli and other
pathogens, is long and disturbing.
The vast majority of
America’s chickens and hogs are raised in the crowded, filthy conditions of
factory farms, officially termed Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. Beef
cattle begin their lives on idyllic ranches, grazing alongside their mothers.
They spend their last year or so jammed into outdoor feedlots.
But meat contamination
doesn’t happen during the animal’s life. Producing meat in an unhealthy
environment might breed pathogens in the animals’ intestinal tracts and their
manure. If the animals are constantly given low doses of antibiotics, as is the
norm in our country, this environment can produce antibiotic-resistant
bacteria.
The pathogens don’t
typically reach the meat until they’re slaughtered. During processing, meat may
come in contact with bacteria from manure or the contents of an intestinal
tract.
That happens often
enough. Otherwise, we wouldn’t see nationwide salmonella outbreaks so
frequently.
Here’s the thing:
While regularly making some of us sick, our system yields dirt-cheap meat.
These days, chicken costs as
little as $1.50 per pound. By comparison, small farmers I know who humanely
raise chickens outdoors, without antibiotics, charge $4 or $5 per pound.
Until we decide that safe
food is worth paying more for our meat, we’ll experience foodborne illness
outbreaks on a regular basis. Higher prices would probably make us eat a bit
less of it, which would be great for our health and boost life
expectancy. Americans eat
more meat than the people of any country in the world except
for tiny Luxembourg.
We can tinker with our
system in minor ways, perhaps requiring slaughterhouses to use new sanitation
techniques. We could ban some drugs given to livestock and poultry, or maybe
develop a new one or two. We can station more inspectors in slaughterhouses.
But as long as we
continue to raise agricultural animals with the sole goals of reducing consumer
prices and maximizing corporate profits, our system will keep making Americans
sick and even killing them in salmonella and E. Coli outbreaks.
Do you believe that
cheap meat is good enough to die for?
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