| I have a message for Tom Vilsack: Please do NOT appoint industry foxes to the USDA food safety henhouse. Or, put another way, please lock the revolving door between industry and government and toss the key into the Potomac. And by that I mean: Do NOT appoint Michael Doyle to the USDA's top food safety position.
The U.S. has obviously had a number of major food safety problems in the recent past. There are two ways to deal with the problems this present to business: 1) Actually fix the problem or 2) Cover up and deny the problem. Obviously option 1 benefits eaters and option 2 means more people will get sick or die. So we need to go with option 1. My fear is that industry wants to go with option 2. It's the USDA's job to do the right thing instead of caving to industry pressure. And right now, it seems like industry really, really, really wants to see Michael Doyle - their guy - in charge of food safety at the USDA. Word on the street has it that Doyle's the nearly definite pick for the job.
Why am I not so hot on Doyle as a choice? Let's start by looking at the company he keeps. He's the director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety, whose board of advisors includes Coca-Cola, Cargill, ConAgra, Kraft, Hormel, McDonalds, and more. You can buy a seat on the board for a mere $20,000, and that will get you the opportunity to "provide input on food safety research needs of the industry" in the words of Doyle (in a letter he sent out inviting companies to buy influence donations).
He's also gotten mucho dinero for research from corporations Con-Agra, FreshExpress, and Ecolab. Small surprise then that he favors industry friendly techno-fixes that cover up the problems of food safety without correcting them at their sources.
That includes fixes like using carbon monoxide to keep the color of beef red - a practice consumer advocates call problematic because color is a major indicator of tainted meat so an unsuspecting consumer might not know that his still-red carbon monoxide-treated beef has gone bad. Doyle says that consumers can still use odor and "use by" dates to tell if the product is bad.
Another favorite for Doyle is irradiation - a practice Safe Food author Marion Nestle calls "a late-stage techno-fix to a problem that should never have happened in the first place." In other words - first put the poop in the food, then nuke it so nobody gets sick. Riiight. But Doyle thinks that's A-OK. He's been quoted as saying:
Well, I agree that irradiation is a very safe process, and it will make the product much safer - NPR's "Talk of the Nation Science Friday," August 29, 1997
Here's another good one from Doyle, from "Healthy Living: How safe is our Food?: With terror attacks possible, experts weigh in on risks, security measures" by Elizabeth Lee, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 9, 2002. He was asked if food was safe. He answered:
I don't think we should be overly concerned about processed foods, especially those that are fully processed by major companies.
I want somebody who is less trusting of major corporations, who isn't accustomed to letting them buy influence, and who wants to actually fix problems instead of merely covering them up or sterilizing them after they occur. Vilsack, the American people deserve better than this. Especially now, in light of the food safety problems that the Obama administration has clearly made it a priority to fix. Please, actually fix those problems. |
