This morning, an Oregon firm is recalling 39,973 pounds of ground beef for E coli contamination, in what the USDA calls a Class 1 recall--eating could lead to death. Last month, more than 300,000 pounds of ground beef were recalled. Did all of the contaminated stuff get off American supermarket shelves, out of freezers in homes, religious orgs, hospitals, schools, restaurants? Nah. After almost five months in office, the "crappy" situation President Obama inherited in Food Safety remains exactly the same as it was on January 20; no one's been named under secretary to run the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, which monitors meat, poultry ad eggs. This is nerve wracking and dangerous for American eaters, as we head into the summer months, when E coli outbreaks become far more likely. Has Food Safety become a leftover for Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, despite all the initial attention paid to it at the beginning of the Obama era? Is he too busy for Food Safety? Certainly he's got the biggest job in the administration. Guest blogger Tom Laskawy, a food and environment specialist, gets to the meat of the matter:It really does seem like Tom
Vilsack can't find anyone to run the
USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. You wouldn't think it would be that hard. There must be dozens of scientists and food safety experts who fit the bill. But this, of course, is the USDA we're talking about -- the poster child for regulatory capture, the phenomenon whereby a regulator acts almost entirely in the interests of its target industry rather than in the interests of the public.
As a result, the head of the
FSIS is typically a scientist or doctor with, if not direct ties to the food industry, then at least a career that puts him or her firmly in the industrial food mainstream. For example, the last two heads of
FSIS have been Elsa
Murano, a Texas A&M scientist who is now that institution's president and Richard Raymond who, before heading
FSIS, was Nebraska's Chief Medical Officer and a senior official in its Health and Human Services department. While competent officials, these folks are not crusading
reformers, which is just the way the food industry likes it.
Indeed, the word is from within the USDA that, in the wake of the Swine Flu epidemic, USDA Chief Tom
Vilsack wants to throw a bone to the livestock industry in particular with the
FSIS appointment. Presumably, he's gotten a shortlist from Big Meat and has been working his way down it. The problem here isn't that they can't find a qualified candidate. The problem is that it appears the industry has embraced a particular brand of food safety, with irradiation and chemical treatment of processed meat at its core. The three candidates mentioned for the post so far,
CIDRAP's Michael Osterholm, and former Monsanto exec
Michael Taylor, and
Mike Doyle (so many Mikes!) are all champions of what
Marion Nestle likes to call "late-stage techno-fixes." Or, as Ob
Fo puts it, "Zap the crap!" But even worse, they have extremely close ties to the industries they are meant to regulate -- each of the three has at some point performed work for a regulated company or an industry group. Or they've had research that's been funded by a regulated company or industry lobbying entity.
As a result, the three Mikes have all provoked strong responses from consumer and sustainable food advocates, which appear to have successfully punctured every trial balloon
Vilsack has floated. In the past, it's hard to imagine that such protests would have gotten very far at the USDA, so I think you have to look at the empty chair at
FSIS as a weird sort of victory. With the outcry over food safety
in the media and new food safety legislation pending in congress, the pressure to get someone in there must be enormous. As a result, we've reached a bit of a stalemate since the industry -- out of hubris or ignorance or both -- has proposed a series of scientists who are out of step with the public on their approach to food safety to go along with their severe conflicts of interest. Ironically, according to
this Roll Call article,
Caroline Smith deWaal, head of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a favorite among consumer groups for the
FSIS post, registered as a lobbyist (as part of her job at
CSPI). But her lobbyist status has been held up as a
disqualifier, naturally. In reality, the food industry would never have swallowed such a powerful consumer activist as head of the
USDA's food safety division. Nor would they accept
pre-eminent food safety lawyer
Bill Marler as their overseer -- he was also reportedly vetted and then passed over for the post.
But with both sides having been given veto power over the post, it remains empty. And rumors coming out of the USDA suggest that they have simply run out of candidates. Another way of looking at it is that the food industry, having been given the chance to put one of their own in the post, doesn't seem to understand that the rules have changed, if slightly. In the end, they will undoubtedly find someone and it will likely be someone whose record is thin enough that neither side will find they can mount an adequate campaign against him or her. Whether
Vilsack's threading that needle will give the
USDA's food safety operation a strong advocate or a milquetoast is very much an open question. The performance of one of
Vilsack's other "compromise" candidates,
Janey Thornton at the Federal Nutrition Service, has not given me a lot of faith in his picks. In the meantime, food safety in this country isn't getting any better. Despite a spanking new
website for the
President's Food Safety Working Group, the administration hasn't released the names of anyone who's serving on the task force.
Vilsack is
heading it with
Health and Human Services Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius...but
nothing's gone on. The Obama administration is
at a food safety stalemate.
*Today, Tom also has a post on Slate about Big Ag, Big Food, Big Cash, and government policy. Worth a read!*Tom Laskaway blogs at Beyond Green and at Grist and is a frequent contributor to path breaking food and environment blogs around the internets.
Last night, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama had dinner with daughter Malia and two other guests at La Fontaine de Mars in Paris. The moderately priced bistro specializes in rustic dishes from France's southwest region of Bordeaux Perigord and the Basque. Foie gras, duck and cassoulet are on the menu. Restaurant staff told the media that the President chose roast lamb for dinner, while everyone else in the party had beef fillets. (Above: A crowd waits to see the First Family outside the restaurant)
