Food Safety Q&A With Dr. Marion Nestle

marion-nestle

Marion Nestle projects the sort of authority the FDA wish it had.

The world of food safety seems more precarious every day, so I thought it pertinent to review this Q&A between Eat.Drink.Better.’s Beth Bader and Dr. Marion Nestle. The interview took place a little over a month ago, when most of us probably thought it couldn’t get worse than the peanut crisis. However, the pistachio recall adds to the urgency of Dr. Nestle’s call for reform. After the interview, I will give an update on the two bills (briefly discussed) that are attempting to shake up and update the powers of the USDA and the FDA.

And now, on with Beth Bader’s interview:

In the wake of the peanut butter recalls, and well, years of food safety issues, the Senate and House are reviewing bills that will strengthen our food safety laws. Opinions on the bills vary from the positive to fears of what the bills mean for small farmers.

While I plan on reading the actual legislation proposed, and more articles, I also decided to ask a real expert on the subject. Dr. Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics, was kind enough to share some of her thoughts on the topic of how politics impacts our plates. Her groundbreaking book covers such topics as “Undermining Dietary Advice,” exploitation of kids and schools, and the inner workings of food lobbies and their influence on government. I caught up with Dr. Nestle at a Food Policy conference in Kansas City.

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BB: In your speech at the Kansas City Food Policy meeting, you mentioned that the issue of food safety is “less of an FDA issue than a Congress issue.” Given the poor track record of the FDA and USDA on food safety, can you explain your comment?

Dr. Nestle: Sure. The FDA and USDA are agencies of the executive branch of government. They do what Congress tells them to with the resources Congress gives them. If Congress wanted us to have safe food, our legislators would pass laws requiring all food producers to develop science-based food safety plans and to follow them carefully, or face dire consequences from a diligent oversight agency. At the moment, Congress only requires those kinds of plans for a handful of foods and does not give the FDA anywhere near enough funds to enforce food safety rules.

BB: In the same speech, you also connected food safety issues to deregulation. The same deregulation that sent the economy into a tail spin. How are the two connected?

Dr. Nestle: Congress backed away from the FDA in the 1990s for attempting to regulate cigarettes and dietary supplements as drugs. It required the agency to do more than one hundred new things without giving it the resources to do so. The FDA has too few scientists and inspectors on staff to do its job. That’s deregulation for you.

BB: On March 3, the Senate introduced the Bill S. 510, or the “FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.” The bill, and House Bill H.R. 875, includes provisions such as mandatory food recalls. What are your thoughts on the bill? Will it be effective?

Dr. Nestle: There are two competing bills before Congress, one to fix the FDA by increasing its resources and the other to create a single food safety agency. Both ask for recall authority, which the FDA currently does not have. I much prefer the single agency approach. This would combine the food safety functions of USDA (meat and poultry) and FDA (everything else). The present divided system behaves as if these foods were unrelated, even thought the spinach, tomato, and peanut butter recalls proved otherwise. These are plant crops contaminated by animal wastes.

BB: You shop at the greenmarket and support local food. Many small farmers and food producers are worried about the bill and the regulations making it difficult for small farms and local producers to continue. Will the “one-size-fits-all” approach become a barrier to farmers markets and CSAs?

Dr. Nestle: Let’s hope that whatever Congress does, its bills make allowances for small scale food production.

BB: What can each of us, as citizens and consumers, do to ensure we have safe food to eat and can access fresh, local foods? What are the positives and/or negatives you see with the new Obama administration and food policy?

Dr. Nestle: Cooking helps. Most microorganisms are killed promptly by heat. It’s way too early to tell what the Obama administration will do. I tend not to pay any attention to the rhetoric. I want to let the actions speak for themselves.

BB: No one seems to like hearing about food recalls and safety issues. Do you experience resistance to your message? Do you ever get tired of fighting the battle for safe food?

Dr. Nestle: Research on risk communication makes it clear that most people are less troubled by microbial food contamination than they are about pesticides, irradiation, or genetic modification. It is understandable to be more worried about things you can’t see or control than those you can. I get plenty of feedback that my messages—and those of many others involved in these same issues—are being heard. I think it’s an exciting time to be involved in these issues. It’s a time when there is a real opportunity for progress.

About those bills…

Both the Senate and House bills have been given to the relevant committees for review.

The House’s bill (H.R. 875), entitled Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, is supposed to “establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes.” It was introduced on February 4th and is now being looked over by the Agriculture and the Energy and Commerce committees.

The Senate bill (S. 510) is the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. The description of the act is rather vague at govtrack.us– It’s “a bill to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with respect to the safety of the food supply”. Dr. Nestle says both bills would give the FDA the authority to do recalls, but looking over the bill’s text, however, it appears that this one is more about the power to impose fines and do inspections as opposed to setting testing requirements for food producers (which, as Dr. Nestle points out many think will unnecessarily harm small farms). Introduced to the Senate on March 3rd, it is now in the hands of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

I’m in favor of both of them happening. I think the USDA and the FDA need to be streamlined into one authority that actually has the power to do recalls and the money perform inspections and, in addition, increase their technology base to more effectively oversee food safety. But, there should definitely be allowances for small farms. A “one-size-fits all” system never works with anything, so why should we expect food safety to function well under that approach?

Alas, we have to wait. The bureaucracy of Congress and its committees speeds up for no one.

UPDATE:

There is a short and sweet editorial in the New York Times called “Food Safety, One Pistachio at a Time” that details where we stand in terms of food safety and where our future may be.  Anyway, the article is a really good way to spend 3 minutes of your day.

April 15, 2009  Tags: , , , , ,   Posted in: Politics

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