Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on a proposed food safety bill that will likely be moving through Congress this summer. The proposed legislation, still in draft form, contains requirements that all food manufacturers write and carry out safety plans, pay an annual registration fee of $1,000 to the Food and Drug Administration to fund increased inspections, and keep track of the distribution of all food products.
New FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg testified that this bill is “a major step in the right direction.” One would think that after the string of national Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks over the past year anyone could realize our nation’s food safety system needed to be reformed. Unfortunately, that apparently is not the case.
Pamela G. Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association spoke at the hearing against a plan to charge food makers $1,000 per facility per year to pay for increased inspections, and was skeptical that the proposed changes would truly be beneficial.
Unfortunately for Ms. Bailey, consumers understand that a safety system largely based on industry self-regulation is simply not working. The fox has guarded the henhouse for too long, and now is the time for real action.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that last year alone there were nearly 1.4 million cases of Salmonella, causing 415 deaths and costing our nation over $2.6 billion. Similarly, last year there was over 73,000 cases of E. coli O157:H7, including 38 deaths, and costing nearly $500 million. Just recently the Salmonella outbreak associated with peanut butter produced by the Peanut Corporation of America is estimated to have cost over $1 billion, and taken at least nine lives.
Americans deserve much better. If even a tiny fraction of foodborne illness cases can be eliminated, the costs of increased inspections will be returned many times over, not just in money, but in lives.
History is not on the industry’s side in this debate. It has almost universally opposed increased regulation going all the way back to the historic Meat Inspection Act of 1906. The wretched conditions of the Chicago meatpacking industry first described in The Jungle made the public demand safer food over one hundred years ago, and was the catalyst for reform then. Once again, we must let industry and our elected officials know that reform is needed to reduce the prevalence of foodborne illness.
Undoubtedly reform is needed. Increased inspections and traceability is a good start. For the food industry to claim that a $1,000 per facility fee to improve and increase inspections is too great is simply foolish. I wonder if Ms. Bailey would be willing to tell the families of those killed by foodborne illness that $1,000 a year was too much to pay to prevent the loss of a family member’s life?
The writer, Mr. Pritzker, is founder and president of PritzkerOlsen, P.A., a national food safety and food poisoning law firm that has collected millions for victims of food poisoning. PritzkerOlsen has years of experience and proven success representing the families and victims of E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella, Listeria, Botulism and other foodborne disease.
