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Serving up food safety?

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The New York Times reports on a CDC study concerning the most common sources of food poisoning.

Poultry was the most commonly identified source of food poisoning in the United States in 2006, followed by leafy vegetables and fruits and nuts, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It sounds like serious efforts are underway to improve things:

A bill that would substantially reform the food safety program at the Food and Drug Administration edged a step closer to a vote on Wednesday during a markup session at the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health. A companion measure is being considered in the Senate. Margaret A. Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, said last week that she supported the legislation, although she had asked for some changes.

After the nightmare of the Bush administration, it’s about time government got back to performing basic public health and safety functions with renewed vigor. We shouldn’t even need to be doing this one-hundred years or so after Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, but that’s what neo-liberalism wrought.

Comments

  1. 1

    I read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” when I was about 18. It was ghastly.

    Even the packers were in awe of him, so the men said. It gave them pleasure to believe this, for Scully stood as the people’s man, and boasted of it boldly when election day came. The packers had wanted a bridge at Ashland Avenue, but they had not been able to get it till they had seen Scully; and it was the same with “Bubbly Creek,” which the city had threatened to make the packers cover over, till Scully had come to their aid. “Bubbly Creek” is an arm of the Chicago River, and forms the southern boundary of the yards: all the drainage of the square mile of packing houses empties into it, so that it is really a great open sewer a hundred or two feet wide. One long arm of it is blind, and the filth stays there forever and a day. The grease and chemicals that are poured into it undergo all sorts of strange transformations, which are the cause of its name; it is constantly in motion, as if huge fish were feeding in it, or great leviathans disporting themselves in its depths. Bubbles of carbonic acid gas will rise to the surface and burst, and make rings two or three feet wide. Here and there the grease and filth have caked solid, and the creek looks like a bed of lava; chickens walk about on it, feeding, and many times an unwary stranger has started to stroll across, and vanished temporarily. The packers used to leave the creek that way, till every now and then the surface would catch on fire and burn furiously, and the fire department would have to come and put it out. Once, however, an ingenious stranger came and started to gather this filth in scows, to make lard out of; then the packers took the cue, and got out an injunction to stop him, and afterward gathered it themselves. The banks of “Bubbly Creek” are plastered thick with hairs, and this also the packers gather and clean.

    This is part of my nightmare of a corporate conservative America.

  4. 4

    having just watched the documentary “Food Inc,” and then making the mistake of re-reading Jim Hightower on the growth of mega farms for turkeys and chickens, Barbara Kingsolver, and having always read the blog of Bill Marler’s stories on the contamination of our vegetable supply I have come to two conclusions.

    One, is I am expanding my own gardens and 100% utilization of locally grown foods (still not bulletproof of course.) And two, I am realizing that since the late 1980’s (and yes, that includes the Clinton Admin, too)our Executive branches are co-conspirators in the poisoning of our populace. Bush was the worst of course, but he was not alone.

    The Obama Admin is taking necessary and positive steps. But don’t fool ourselves into thinking this is going to solve our problems. Its only slowing the rate of the chemical overloads as well as the out and out poisoning of our families, our children, and ourselves.

  6. 6

    @3

    Did we claim that?

    I’m sure people got sick during Bush #1, St. Ronnie, Ford and Nixon…

  7. 7

    @3

    Read #4

    Clinton and Co pulled some boneheaded bullshit that allowed CAFO’s to grow.

    While this isn’t enough, it’s welcome news and a good start.

  8. 8

    I guess I took this quote in the OP:

    After the nightmare of the Bush administration, it’s about time government got back to performing basic public health and safety functions with renewed vigor.

    …to correlate that the current food poison stats are due inaction or change in policy/regulation by the Bush admin.

    No specifics of inaction/de-regulation were given though, so I wasn’t sure why a post that started out on a new study on food poisoning ended with “the nightmare of the Bush admin..”

    Funny, but the story linked actually states that the number of people getting food poisoning declined during the Bush years:

    “After a concerted campaign by the federal Department of Agriculture to improve the safety of chickens, the number of people sickened by contaminated poultry in 2006 declined compared with an average of the previous five years, according to C.D.C. researchers.”

  9. 9

    I spent the first half of my career working my ass off trying to help prevent and treat heart disease, while Corporate Amerikka was doing everything it could to mindfuck and supersize the populace into a herd of bloated, brain dead bags of lard.

  10. 10

    @1 Ah, but that’s nothing compared to Sinclair’s description of the worker who falls into a vat and is rendered into hot dogs or some other meat product.

    George W. Bush wanted to give taxpayer money to meatpackers to hire their own inspectors. This is the GOP’s concept of “regulation.” Under Bush “regulation,” you could be a cannibal and not even know it.

  11. 11

    @3 “So, there was no food poisoning before Bush was president?”

    Not nearly as much, and nowhere near the number of tainted-food scandals as occurred under Bush’s non-regulation regimen.

  12. 12

    @8 It would appear Bush’s non-regulation of chicken producers poisoned more people early in his administration than at the end. This is what passes for “accomplishment” in the wingnut mind.

  13. 13

    @3
    nolaguy
    didnt you know that before bush there was nothing but sugar and spice and everything nice

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