I remember the sinking feeling, hearing that dogs and cats had died eating contaminated food. Then the flash of guilt‚Äö√Ñ√Æhad we poisoned our dogs? I remember hearing the name of the manufacturer, my wife searching the web frantically for a catalogue of its products, the stab of fear when we found the name of the food our own dogs eat. Then the wave of relief‚Äö√Ñ√Æit was only canned food; our dogs eat dry. I began investigating more. One of the things I learned was that the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t been able to confirm “with 100 percent certainty” that the offending agent didn’t go into human food. Then it neglected to reveal the name of the tainted product’s U.S. distributor. It is time to get to the root of the problem. I blame the conservatism.
Grover Norquist’s maxim about “shrinking government to the size where it can be drowned in a bathtub” has been a rallying cry and an article of faith among Conservatives and neoConservatives for awhile now. This mindset presumes that the only valid functions of the federal government are defense and foreign policy, and that the states and the free markert should take care of everything else. Of course, that this is a horribly simplistic, self-interested, and naive policy goal should be self evident by now. One need look no farther than the recent tainted pet food scandal to get a glimpse of where we’re headed if Conservatives get their way. Call it policy or population control, but Conservatism is a recipe for disaster when comes to protecting the safety of this country’s food supply.
If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you’ve heard of the numerous warnings- about spinach, ham, pet food, lettuce, yadayadayada…. Yet, in these stories, we never seem to hear about why these things are happening. Yes, the food production cycle is not a closed system, and it’s not imperviously to contamination by any number of factors. Could it be, though, that a good numbers of the food scares we’ve been subjected to lately were caused- either wholly or in part- by ineffective, inefficient, and inept oversight and inspection? COULD these threats to public health and safety have been prevented? Well, you could try asking someone at the Food and Drug Administration, but with the budget cuts they’ve suffered under this Administration, I doubt you’d find anyone who could talk to you.
First, they came for the spinach.
I remember the day last September. The supermarket had a new kind of salad dressing, one that looked like it would taste good with spinach. I went to the produce section to buy a bag. But they all had been recalled. Three people had died from E. coli contamination from eating spinach. I decided I could live without the spinach.
Next they came for the peanut butter, and I didn’t pay much attention. I don’t much like peanut butter.
Then they came for the tomatoes. Then the Taco Bell lettuce.
Then the mushrooms, then ham steaks, then summer sausage. I started worrying.
Then, they came for the pet food.
Of course, this is not to say that Conservatives or the FDA are directly responsible for these food recalls. The folks responsible, of course, are the companies, many of whom have frankly been more interested in profit margin than in public safety. Too many companies have cut corners in an attempt to cut costs and drive their stock price up. In doing so, the FDA has been complicit due to lax oversight. And why do you think that FDA oversight has been lax? Well, could it perhaps be do to Conservatives following Grover Norquist’s philosophy?
Surveying the results, what once looked to me like principle now looks to me now like mania. Conservatism has been killing Americans. The recent food safety crisis is only one case study.
Let’s start connecting the dots.
The Associated Press studied the records and found that between 2003 and 2006 the Food and Drug Administration conducted 47 percent fewer safety inspections. FDA field offices have 12 percent fewer employees. Safety tests for food produced in the United States have gone down by three quarters—have almost ground to a halt—in the previous year alone.
Fewer inspections, fewer employees, fewer safety tests. Did anyone stop to think that this troika might be the perfect recipe for decreased food safety? And did anyone stop to think what this might mean to public health and safety? Of course not, because all Conservatives really seem to care about is money and their ability to make as much of it as they possibly can.
The free market may do many things well, but one thing it does NOT do well is to protect the public from those willing to cut any corner in order to increase their profit margins. We may be many years removed from the horror stories of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, but there’s a reason that the FDA has for years been charged with inspecting companies who supply our nation’s food and validating it’s safety as much as they possibly can.
By gutting the FDA’s budget, and with it it’s enforcement powers, we are likely- nay, almost guaranteed- to see more and greater threats to the American public’s food supply.
It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to see that Conservatism is indeed killling society. The primary duty and responsibility of government may be to conduct defense and foreign policy, but on a secondary level, there is also the responsibility to protect Americans from threats to our food supply. Unfortunately, it would seem that Conservatives and neoConservatives are perfectly willing to assume the risks of decreased inspections and oversight. After all, the free market will take care of that, eh?
Yeah, try telling that to a family that just lost their child to an E. coli infection.
