After a Scary Year will Food in 2010 be any Safer?

A grim holiday menu closes 2009: San Antonio Bay oysters polluted with Noroviruses, grilled beef infected with E. coli from contaminated tenderizing needles, chicken with Campylobacter, imported ham with Listeria, stuffing with salmonella-contaminated hazelnuts, and nutritional drinks fouled with Bacillus cereus—all recalled or warned about in December alone. "And 2010 isn't shaping up to set a safer table, according to some of the country's leading food safety experts." While the Obama administration promises improvements through the Food Safety Working Group and new resources, "some managers and field investigators in the same agencies have views much closer to those of food safety activists. They predict that the very powerful food industry lobbyists, especially for the meat producers, will go down swinging and screaming to thwart meaningful food safety reform." Food & Water Watch advocates giving FDA greater authority and resources, noting FSIS districts have been running double-digit vacancy rates for years. The USDA estimates that between 2.5 million and 3 million cattle are slaughtered monthly, with about 5 percent infected with E. coli O157:H7—"about one contaminated animal every 20 to 30 seconds." Jaydee Hanson of the Center for Food Safety notes: "As bad as the Iraq and Afghan wars are, we have a food safety system in the U.S. that probably kills as many people each year, and most people don't think this is acceptable." Marler emphasizes the fundamental problem: "The federal agencies responsible for ensuring the safety of America's food usually know what's being done wrong by food processors, and all too often they do little or nothing to stop it until it's too late."