Going Nuts Over Food Safety

The current outrage over the bonuses paid by taxpayers to AIG executives is a potent political brew; woe to those who underestimate the ability of Congress to do everything within its power to reclaim at least some of that money.

In a similar fashion, the outrage over the Peanut Corporation of America’s negligent plant hygiene practices is another source of intense ire on Capitol Hill that will result in some significant policy changes in the nation’s food safety system. Chalk it up as another indication that we are indeed in a new era of responsibility, as 2009 unfolds.

In fact, the food safety rhetoric coming out of Washington is actually a reflection of a handful of related threads that are being weaved together to spur a new approach to preserving public health. Those threads include: last year’s record beef recall because of negligent cattle treatment at a California meat plant; the wild goose chase investigation in 2008 of salmonella-tainted tomatoes, only to find out that hot peppers were the source; the scandalous dilution of Chinese milk with melamine; and the renewed push to restrict the use of non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in food animals. All of these are being pointed to as indications that the food system is seriously ailing, and needs radical surgery.

Already, leading members of both the House and Senate are pushing bills that would ramp up the record oversight and recall authority of the Food and Drug Administration, increase the frequency of government inspections, especially of imported foods, and boost the overall level of financial resources devoted to food safety. There is even talk of combining the food safety roles of FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture into a new, distinct regulatory entity.

Obviously, anything that alters the role of the FDA could have a significant impact on dairy production and processing. Fortunately, the hygiene and sanitation requirements spelled out in the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance, which remain the bedrock food safety regime for dairy, are not going to go anywhere.

In fact, the current momentum to make changes in food policy may help us accomplish several objectives that we’ve been seeking. For one, we now have a much stronger rationale for seeking a mandatory national animal identification system. Animal ID will greatly facilitate traceability back to the farm. Indeed, it will be hard to achieve any sort of farm-to-fork traceability without identifying farm premises, and ultimately, identifying individual animals. NMPF recently testified before the House Agriculture Committee in support of mandatory animal ID system. There’s an obvious connection between it, and the objectives of those pushing for greater government oversight of food safety.

The other issue the salmonella-tainted peanuts (and peppers from last year – and just in the last few days, pistachios) raises is our schizophrenic regulation of raw milk sales and marketing. The FDA bans the interstate sale of raw milk, while allowing states to set their own course on in-state sales. The raw milk movement, while small, is a potent grassroots force that has been successful in rolling back restrictions in some states on the selling of raw milk.

Now, there’s plenty of hard evidence that raw milk has been sold containing salmonella, listeria, e. coli, campylobacter, and other known human pathogens. Without pasteurization, these bacteria are inevitably going to be present in raw fluid milk reaching consumers. The concern over salmonella in peanut products, which reaches all the way to the White House, should also be directed at laws that allow salmonella to be sold to consumers – many of them children, given the demographics of milk consumption – in raw milk. It can’t be an outrage to sell pathogenic peanuts, but on the other hand, just a hazard of doing business in selling raw pathogenic milk.

The dairy industry has the opportunity to seize both the momentum and the high moral ground on these food safety issues. Times of crisis present opportunities that we shouldn’t overlook.

National Milk Producers Federation

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