Something Smells, And It’s Not Meat

An update in the paper caught my eye. The story followed the recovery of 2-year-old Joseph Lopez of Sacramento. Just before Thanksgiving, he ate sausage that was contaminated with E. coli bacteria.

The toddler almost died, spent a month on kidney dialysis, and may have developed attention deficit disorder as a result of the poisoning.

His parents say he’s better, but he’s not the same kid.

The incident was especially frightening to Northern Californians because of other E. coli poisonings still fresh in our minds. Only two years before, the public’s confidence in the safety of the nation’s food supply was shattered. Hundreds of people got sick and three children died after eating contaminated meat, most of it purchased at Jack in the Box outlets.

The public responded angrily, demanding that government improve its antiquated meat-inspection methods, which still rely on the touch-look-and-smell method adopted in 1906.

New regulations were to go into effect next year to protect the estimated 5 million people who get sick and 4,000 who die each year because of tainted meat and poultry. Until now.

What we face now is the undoing of decades of food-safety regulations, if Congress and industry supporters have their way. In a reform package sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the changes generally have two aims:

Reduce the burden on businesses to prove their food is safe;

Force government agencies to prove that new rules would reduce risks AND be worth the cost.

To which I ask, worth the cost to whom? To food manufacturers who must ensure their products are safe? Or, to people relying on the safety of food, who might otherwise become ill or die?

How does one measure these conflicting benefits and costs, and who does the measuring?

And what if the benefits of less regulation to corporations mean the cost of a sick or dead child to someone else? How much is my child’s life worth to these industry forces?

It’s priceless to me.

We’ll know the answers to those questions if we follow the political debate in Washington. We’ll hear politicians and industry experts speak of “cost-benefit economics” and “threshold exposures” to carcinogens and other dangerous substances. In the language of Washington, they’ll disparage public concerns and paint consumer-advocacy groups as worrywarts who expect a utopian, risk-free society. They’ll laugh and pretend to know better.

But what these long-winded debates are best at is obscuring the moral issues. Parents don’t care about cost-benefit economics. They care about the possibility of cancer in their family. The moral issue in this debate is why corporate profits should prevail over human values, plain and simple.

Under the 1990 Clean Air Act that Republicans and industry lobbyists call excessive, for instance, oil, steel and chemical companies are allowed to spew toxins into the neighborhoods around their factories so long as no more than 10 in 100,000 people die of conditions related to their exposure.

But would the government let me fire into a crowd of 100,000 people as long as I didn’t kill more than 10 human beings? Of course not. I’d be tried, convicted, imprisoned and never see the light of day again.

Another example comes from the meat-inspection system, which was set to include testing for the E. coli bacteria beginning next year. Trade associations such as the American Meat Institute endorsed testing during the E. coli scare but now have quietly withdrawn their support. The association is pursuing a time-consuming method of regulation-writing that would postpone any reduction in food-borne illnesses by years. One of the Dole-sponsored bills aims to postpone or drop microbial testing entirely.

Stalling the process is a time-worn tactic. It took more than 25 years - and 28 postponements engineered by industry forces - before the Food and Drug Administration finally restricted the use of cancer-causing red dyes in foods.

Reformers describe less regulation in terms of “streamlining” and eliminating bureaucracy. The truth is, the cost to taxpayers will rise if the burden of proof falls to government agencies rather than to the industry producing these products.

The GOP bills “impose meaningless process and endless obstacles,” Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. David Kessler told The New York Times. “They make it harder to do what people expect and want us to do, like protecting the food they eat.”

Maybe you’re content to take your chances. Or, maybe you’d like to give Dole a personal call. His Washington number is (202) 224-6521.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Diana Griego Erwin McClatchy News Service