Consumer Concern Badly Misfocused

First, the good news: Fudge is still safe. But do be careful around meat.

‘Tis the season for our busy, pizza-to-go culture to dust off the old home cooking skills.

Meanwhile, a growing cloud has appeared over our nation’s food supply. The techniques of mass-production agriculture are creating biological hazards in our meat.

Neither industry nor government have responded satisfactorily to the problem. Consider:

At a church supper in Maryland this fall, two people died and 700 fell ill after eating stuffed ham infected with salmonella.

This summer, Hudson Foods recalled 25 million pounds of hamburger due to evidence of contamination with a deadly strain of the bacterium, E. Coli.

A lethal form of salmonella known as typhimurium DT 104, resistant to antibiotics and the cause of animal deaths and fatal human food poisoning in Europe, has begun to spread in the United States. U.S. News & World Report described the outbreak in its Nov. 24 issue.

The Minnesota Health Department expressed concern this fall about widespread contamination of poultry (79 percent of chickens and 58 percent of turkeys) with campylobacter, the leading cause of bacterial food poisonings. Worse, 20 percent of the contaminated chickens and 84 percent of the contaminated turkeys carried a strain resistant to antibiotics.

To keep animals healthy under the conditions of modern mass production, meat producers feed them antibiotics - including the most potent drugs available, which also are needed to treat human food poisoning victims. Overuse of antibiotics causes drug-resistant germs to emerge and spread.

In response, Congress this fall started considering the creation of a separate, aggressive Food Safety Administration. In response, meat producers have argued for irradiation, which can kill whatever germs their methods leave in our food.

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration approved irradiation of beef. Irradiation of poultry has been approved for years but remains uncommon. Although the radiation leaves no residue in treated meat, it makes consumers nervous anyway. In fact, the spread of drug-resistant disease is the real hazard.

Even if the market does eventually embrace irradiation, this must not be seen as an alternative to tougher inspections and safer practices at farms and meat processors.

Where does this leave consumers? In jeopardy. But, there are things each of us can do to make food safe: wash our hands, clean our knives and cutting boards with care and cook our meat until we are certain it’s well done. Happy holidays.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board