This article is part of a series by Sarah Rodeo ’13 called “Musings on the Meat Industry.” To view more posts, browse here.
Where has the principle of fairness gone in America? America’s reputation as a dreamland filled with justice and opportunity is growing more and more into mythology. You hear about it all the time, how greed and industry have replaced honesty and fairness in America. One example of this is the utter failure of government agencies to adequately protect our food. With this article, I’m going to focus on how the Food and Drug Administration in particular has been responsible for the entrance of contaminated animal products into the mouths of the American public.
Three main ways that that the FDA fails to protect our meat are that it (1) doesn’t require companies to register their ingredients — it’s only strongly suggested, (2) has no power to recall products, and (3) doesn’t test or approve many products before selling them. These three stipulations have had a huge impact on the safety, or lack thereof, of our meat and dairy products.
Assurances by the FDA since 1979 have been underhanded and misleading. A 1986 report, unanimously approved by the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, concluded that “the FDA has consistently disregarded its responsibility – has repeatedly put what it perceives are interests of veterinarians and the livestock industry ahead of its legal obligation to protect consumers – jeopardizing the health and safety of consumers meat, milk, and poultry.”
For example, it took the FDA until 1998 to finally legalize radiation pasteurization of red meat, a process that has been proven to effectively kill bacteria. In 1993, 4 children were killed by hamburger meat that was contaminated with E. coli. 700 other people became sick, some of them with permanent kidney and brain damage. In 1997, the largest meat recall in the history of the U.S., a return of 25 million pounds of ground beef, took place when 16 people became sick with E. coli from hamburgers. E. coli is estimated to kill 250 people a year and infect 20,000 others. Other contaminated foods are estimated to annually kill 9,000 people and cause 6.5 to 33 million cases of illness.
These regulatory disasters began with the age of ideology that was brought to America by regulation-opposed conservatives, who essentially made food protection agencies ineffective by denying them resources. When mad cow disease was officially detected in cattle raised in the U.S. in 2003, the Bush administration denied a Kansas-based beef producer permission to test his cows for the illness. This was because other beef producers feared that consumers would demand that they also test their cows, which would probably mean a drop in profits. You’d think that the government and the FDA would have applauded this seed of self-regulation, but why would they make such a logical decision when it might risk the prosperity of a major industry? How American of them.
Even foreign policy took a hit. In South Korea in 2008, there were mass demonstrations of protesters against the prime minister’s decision to continue allowing imports of U.S. beef. The department did eventually expand its testing, but not after consumer outrage and hundreds of filed reports. The FDA has also failed to protect the public from the great dangers of hormonal meats, which pose serious and imminent risks to humans. Since 1975, the prevalence of breast cancer has increased by 23%, and prostate and testes cancer by 60%, along with other reproductive cancers, due to increased concentrations of these unnatural, implanted steroids. The FDA has approved the use of bovine growth hormone, antibiotics, genetic modifiers, thousands of inconclusively-tested drugs, and cloning.
Another hugely noted FDA controversy is the recall of 500 million contaminated eggs in August 2010, which affected around 250 people with salmonella. These eggs had been distributed by the nationwide brands Albertson, Mountain Dairy, Ralph’s, Booms, Sunshine, Hallandale, Traficant, Farm Fresh, Shore land, Lund, Dutch Farms and Kemp.
The failures of the FDA are unsettling, irresponsible and disturbing. How can we trust the FDA to protect our food adequately when no one is is overseeing it? It’s the equivalent of trusting kids to try their hardest on all their homework with no teachers ever checking it. I would call for more regulatory powers over the FDA and other government “health” agencies that are not clearly doing their job.