December 21, 2008

President-elect Obama has introduced his Cabinet nominees and major staff appointments, and has left Chicago for a two-week rest – admittedly well-earned – in Hawaii with his family.

We have met the new President’s foreign policy team, his economic team, his energy/climate change team, his trade & commerce team, and the rest of the people who will be sitting around the Cabinet table.

We have been introduced to the incoming President’s Energy Czarina, his Chief Science & Technology Advisor, and his Director of the new White House Office on Health Care Reform.

We can deduce – to some extent – from these appointments the new policy directions in which President-elect Obama hopes to lead the United States. But on one issue that affects the health of every US resident, the incoming President has remained silent.

There is no one at the Cabinet table to speak for food safety.

The responsibility for ensuring the microbiological and chemical safety of our food supply is shared among several federal departments, most prominently the Department of Health & Human Services and the Department of Agriculture. In each case, food safety is a Cinderella praying for her fairy godmother to save her from the ashes.

Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, the current FDA Commissioner, has already announced that he will resign effective Inauguration Day. His replacement will have a full plate replenishing an agency that has been bleeding expertise for the last eight years and more. The FDA’s food safety enforcement activities represent only a small part of the agency’s overall mandate.

The newly nominated Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, is a proponent of bioethanol, and was governor of an agricultural state. We haven’t received a single hint of his attitude toward the food safety side of USDA – again only a small part of the department’s mandate.

Food safety, once more, will be the orphan of US government policy – unless President-elect Obama gives this vital area a seat at the Cabinet table. There is precedent for this move.

Former President Clinton established a President’s Council on Food Safety to review, and recommend improvements to, the country’s food safety policies. The Council’s recommendations, for the most part, have been gathering dust for the last eight years.

Please, Mr. President-elect. Give food safety policy a strong voice in your administration. Give those of us who care about food safety “Change We Can Believe In.”

In 1993, US Vice President Gorerecommended that the nation’s food industry and regulators move towards a preventative system for ensuring food safety.

In 1994, USDA established the Office of the Under Secretary for Food Safety.

In 1995, FDA introduced a compulsory HACCP program for the seafood industry.

In 1996, USDA introduced a compulsory HACCP program (the “MegaReg“) for the meat and poultry industry. CDC introduced the FoodNet surveillance system, and President Clinton signed both the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Food Quality Protection Act.

In 1997, the Clinton Administration introduced its National Food Safety Initiative, the “Food Safety from Farm to Table” program, and the “Partnership for Food Safety Education.” And approved the irradiation of meat.

In 1998, PulseNet knitted together a network of public health laboratories to speed the detection and identification of disease outbreaks. The Joint Institute for Food Safety Research sought to bring together expertise from government, academia and industry to coordinate research activities. The Administration established the President’s Food Safety Council.

In 1999, FDA and the Treasury Department began to tackle the problem of unsafe imported foods.

In 2000, George W. Bush took office.

Washington, DC. August 28, 2033–The Secretary of State for Food Safety announced today that – effective January 1, 2034 – all food shipped interstate for retail sale must be sterilized by irradiation. The Secretary urged food regulators in all fifty states to follow suit.

When asked whether this new mandate would also apply to imported foods, Secretary Jenna Bush replied, “You betcha!”

The announcement was made on the 25th anniversary of the date that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declared the largest produce-related Salmonella outbreak in US history to be at an end. That outbreak, which was traced eventually to contaminated jalapeño and serrano peppers imported from Mexico, sickened 1,442 people, sending nearly 300 of them to hospital.

In the 25 years since that watershed outbreak, the number of food poisoning incidents linked to meats, eggs, poultry, produce and dairy products has increased steadily. And the number of different types of disease-causing E. coli in the environment, in livestock, and in our food supply has grown dramatically.

“It’s not just about E. coli O157:H7 anymore,” said Secretary Bush. “There are at least two dozen different toxin-producing E. coli that are just as deadly as O157:H7. Twenty-five or thirty years ago, we might have been able to clean up feedlot runoff. We could have prevented these pathogens from overrunning our agricultural areas. But we didn’t – it would have cost too much.”

Slaughterhouse operators and meat packers welcomed the announcement. “It’s great news,” said the CEO of Universal Beef, “we’ll finally get away from all the expensive and burdensome HACCP/SSOP regulations that were imposed on us by the government a generation ago.” Spokespeople for the produce and poultry industry associations were equally effusive.

Not everyone, though, welcomed the announcement. Small-scale farmers, livestock operators and food processors expressed concern about the cost of implementing this new mandate. And “natural food” activists were fighting mad. “This is disgusting,” said one woman who asked not to be identified, “Irradiation will destroy the nutrients in our food. We’ve polluted our water and soil, and we should clean it up. What kind of a world are we leaving our children?”

We contacted Phyllis Entis, the now-retired founder of eFoodAlert and author of the classic text Food Safety: Old Habits, New Perspectives, for her reaction to the announcement. “I saw this coming 25 years ago,” said Ms. Entis. “I predicted in 2008 that we were on a slippery slope to mandatory food irradiation.”

Most of the country’s trading partners reacted angrily to the US announcement. “It’s an unfair trade barrier,” exclaimed the President of Mexico. “Not fair dinkum,” commented Australia’s Minister of Trade, “our food is clean and we should not have to irradiate in order to sell to the US market.” “I’m outraged that we were not consulted beforehand,” commented the President of the EU, “we must consider very carefully before deciding to allow irradiated US foodstuffs into Europe.”

When contacted, the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs declined to comment. His aide, however, hinted that Canada would soon be announcing its own mandatory food irradiation policy.