In an in-depth investigation, Digital Journal unearths the mismanagement of U.S. food safety and how China has been slowly poisoning us with plastic chemicals dumped into chicken feed. Put down that fork — it’s time to digest an ugly truth.
Digital Journal — Today, the Food and Drug Administration announced chicken feed in Indiana farms contained contaminated wheat gluten imported from China. Border inspectors now have the authority to detain Chinese ingredients used in food ranging from breakfast bars to noodles. In even more alarming news, the FDA recently took 750 samples of wheat gluten and products made with wheat gluten and found 330 positive for melamine (a major component in inks and plastics) or melamine combined with another substance. Merely 1 per cent of import shipments are closely inspected before they reach U.S. shores. Lost your appetite yet?
In light of the recent news on pet food tainted with the chemical melamine, government attention has turned to what we humans stuff in our bellies. We recently learned of 6,000 hogs eating contaminated pet food. Since March 16, more than 100 brands of pet food have been recalled due to a melamine outbreak, causing an unknown number of dogs and cat to get sick after eating the chemical-laced food.
These crises are not coincidental. “This is a disaster waiting to happen,” Elisa Odabashian tells DigitalJournal.com. Odabashian is the West Coast director of Consumers Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. “The inspection of imported foods is infinitesimal.”
She cites recent a report from the Associated Press as evidence to the governmental inefficacy. In 2006, Odabashian says, the FDA conducted just half the inspections of U.S. food manufacturing facilities that it did three years earlier. Also, it conducted 75 per cent fewer safety tests of U.S.-produced food in 2006 than it did in 2003.
Referring to the discovery of melamine in chicken feed, Odabashian says, “any foreign material in food supply is a symptom of a very broken food safety system.”
And while the FDA has jurisdiction over 80 per cent of food produced in the U.S., the agency closely inspects 1 per cent of imported foods. Also, the FDA has been critiqued for retaining the number of food inspectors since 1999, even though the volume of product shipments has more than tripled in the past eight years.
“All consumers expect a government body to ensure food coming to the market is safe,” Odabashian says. “There shouldn’t simply be an outcry after several people have fallen ill.” She refers to the spinach and Taco Bell scares last year, adding how the spinach industry has yet to recover from the e.coli contamination disaster.
“Because the current U.S. administration is not focused on food safety, consumers will ultimately end up voting with their pocketbooks by not buying tainted products,” Odabashian says.
The FDA has reacted to the pet-food recalls, and the discovery of foreign chemicals in wheat gluten, by promising an extensive inspection of Chinese plants. The agency plans to pursue the possibility of Chinese workers intentionally sabotaging the chicken feed used by U.S. farmers.
Odabashian doesn’t like where the fingers are being pointed. “Blame should be put on the gatekeepers in this country that allow food into the marketplace,” she says.
Now, Americans must be wondering about the accuracy of food labels, and where to find the source of certain added chemicals and ingredients. Consumers groups are advocating for answers, even if the feds are slow to offer them. Odabashian points out that Congress has yet to pass a law requiring labelling the origin of meats, peanuts, and fresh fruits and vegetables sold in stores. The law was embedded in the 2002 Farm Bill, but the giants of agribusiness lobbied to block Country of Origin Labelling. Who can you thank for that? Wal-Mart is among the culprits, which should come as no surprise to anyone with a background in retail economics. Does any hot dog stand want to list what’s truly in the meat?
The FDA is saving face by telling us melamine has a very low chance of causing human illness. And Chinese authorities quickly banned the chemical substance from its food manufacturers, and then closed the factories producing it. But on the flip side is this comment from Zhao Yan of the Shandong Taian Ningyang County Weiye Chemical Co., which markets melamine: “If you bring money, anyone can buy.”
How appropriate. It’s a statement that could echo deep in the chambers of the FDA. For the same reason sweatshops have dotted China, mega grocery stores prefer buying cheap food made thousands of miles away over breaking the bank account on local goods.
It’s too easy to attack Big Business, because the U.S. itself should look inward for answers. Should Americans be subject to tainted food because its food-inspection agency is lax or under-staffed? This has evolved into an opportunity for the U.S. to overhaul an outdated agency, complete with marketing efforts to reassure customers they’re not getting cancer with their roast chicken.
The worst outcome that could hit the U.S.is complacency. As William Hubbard, associate director of the FDA from 1991 to 2005, recently said in an interview: “If this isn’t a wake-up call, then people are so asleep they are catatonic.”
