Factory Food

My taste in food is pretty wide-ranging. There is a very short list of things that I will not eat – brussel sprouts, potted meat, bugs (chocolate covered or otherwise). These are things that I think just taste bad. To this list I have added reecently hamburger that is anything but well done and all pre-packaged lunch meat. I won’t eat either of those items purely for reasons of safety and I thank Molly Ivins for that. In a book she wrote a few years back (I can’t remember which one and I don’t have time to go look it up), Molly explored the rather disturbing world of factory meat production and the equally disturbing lack of effective inspection in such places. In her work, she found that Big Food, firms like ConAgra and Archer Daniels Midland, could use campaign contributions as a successful deterrent to stricter regulation. It should be no surprise that Big Food and conservative, anti-regulatory politicians get along famously. To paraphrase Ivins, when Republicans are in office, it is a good time to consider vegetarianism.

Given the recent outbreaks of foodborne illness, it is high time that the food production industry had a little more oversight beyond determining just how much visible feces is permissible on an unprocessed side of beef. BTW – I am not making that up. There really is such a regulation and, much to my horror, the answer is more than none. So when the FDA announces that they are going to change the inspection regime for meat factories, I am more than a little skeptical. Particularly when you read something like this from someone who should know:

Inspectors fear they will be assigned too many plants to inspect, said Stan Painter, chairman of the National Joint Council of Meat Inspection Locals. "Too many plants, too little time, too little authority," Painter said. "Tell me how we could do a better job when we already have the flexibility to do what they're talking about?"

We live in a world where spinach can kill you and designer potatoes are being linked to cancer. Food safety has a real and tangible benefit to society and is something that government can do effectively, if it wants to. It is simply a matter of priorities. Upton Sinclair wrote “The Jungle” just over 100 years ago. That work laid the foundation for government regulation of food production and safety. It is something of a mystery to me that generations later, we still struggle with the same problems. I bet that Sinclair would feel the same way.