Why some food isn’t fit to eat

Everyone needs to eat. There is a tremendous variation in what people eat, from fast food to slow home cooking, with a multitude of regional, cultural, personal, financial and individual choices at work. We make choices not only about what foods we eat but also how they are prepared.

In North America and Western Europe, commercial establishments that prepare and sell food are inspected and regulated, mainly by local governments, to ensure that they are reasonably clean, that food is kept at the right temperature and to control vermin like mice and roaches.

The Food and Drug Administration in the United States and corresponding agencies in other countries have extensive programs to teach people who cook at home how to do it right — keep cold food cold, hot food hot, avoid contamination and so on. (FDA’s Safe Eats program)

Food safety has become a pressing issue ever since a May outbreak of E. coli in Germany killed 31 people and sent 3,100 people, including 700 with acute kidney failure, to hospitals across Europe.

Before bean sprouts grown in northern Germany were identified as the problem, German officials blamed Spanish cucumbers, causing their growers to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in sales throughout Europe. This was a hard blow to the Spanish economy, already reeling from 45 percent youth unemployment. Russia embargoed all fruits and vegetables from Europe, causing even more losses.

In the midst of the food safety scare in Europe, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a salmonella outbreak in 15 states in the East and Midwest that sent at least 31 people to the hospital. Salmonella is the most common food-borne illness in the United States, according to the CDC. An outbreak in 2010 resulted in a recall of nearly half a billion eggs. In addition, salmonella infections caused nearly 2,300 hospitalizations and 29 deaths last year.

Every year about 1 in 6 people in the U.S. get sick from food poisoning and 3,000 die, the CDC claims. “The bottom line is that food-borne illness, particularly salmonella, is far too common,” CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden told reporters June 7. “We need to do more.” (Washington Post, June 8)

“From a consumer perspective, the protections are shoddy,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C. “In some stores you may have a very strong system of protections, but in others there may be no protections.” (Christian Science Monitor, June 10)

The food industry, which encompasses a vast array of producers, distributors and sellers, brings in billions of dollars in profits a year. At every step along the long and winding path from farm to plate, contamination and adulteration from a multitude of sources — chemical as well as biological — are possible.

Better food safety requires the political will to hire more inspectors, impose and enforce stricter safety regulations. In an economic system that puts profits ahead of people, this political will is missing.

The regulations that exist and are enforced are designed to keep a major epidemic from spreading and keep consumers buying under the assurance that the government is protecting their health. The “information” the FDA spreads is useful for individuals who want to eat healthy but also spreads the notion that food poisoning is due to individual carelessness or misinformation.

A socialist system that put people first and guaranteed to the best of its ability that all food eaten was safe would also ensure that everyone had enough to eat.