| I just got back from Planned Parenthood. In my financially-depressed state I figured it'd be best to let Uncle Sam pick up the tab for my birth control pills. Why do I bring that up here? Well, in my book I compare our approaches to food safety with our approaches to safe sex. I had to fill out a bunch of forms and chat with a nurse before getting my pills. They wanted to make sure I was taking precautions for all kinds of STDs as well as for pregnancy. They gave me some handouts to warn me that the birth control pills alone don't prevent STDs. They verified that I'd been tested for STDs within the past year and that my tests were negative. And then I got my pills. Voila! Safe sex accomplished.
That's how we should deal with food safety. Not with condoms and birth control pills but by decreasing risky behaviors and preventing the spread of disease and the contamination of our food, AND by following that up with testing. In the case of E. coli, we could do that. Don't keep the cows in feedlots. Let them graze on pasture. Or - still better than what we've got now - keep them in the feedlots but let them eat grass for the last few days of their lives. And even then - even if there is E. coli 0157:H7 in the cow's gut, it's STILL not in the meat until somebody screws up at the slaughterhouse. But we allow slaughterhouses to run so fast (to maximize profits, at the expense of animal welfare, worker safety, and food safety) that occasionally somebody at the gut table screws up and splatters manure everywhere. Now, if E. coli 0157:H7 was in the cow, it's in the meat. And that meat might get mixed up with many other animals and sold in one big tainted batch as ground beef.
So what's our plan? Raising the cows in cleaner, healthier, safer conditions? Slowing down the line speed in slaughterhouses? Nope. An E. coli vaccine for cows. Which is - if anything - a very short term fix. If the cows are still in filthy conditions, and the manure's still getting into the meat, it's only a matter of time before some new bug comes along that can harm us. Going back to safe sex, I got the HPV vaccine but that's not a get out of jail free card to go out and have unprotected sex. Even with the vaccine, I'm still susceptible to all other STDs - and the cows and meat will still be susceptible to all kinds of pathogens even after being vaccinated for E. coli.
I'm not saying the E. coli vaccine is a bad thing. If it works, great. I mean, when given the choice, I got the HPV vaccine. But it's not a substitute for preventing disease by keeping the cows in healthier conditions, just as the HPV vaccine doesn't mean I can take home a new guy from the bar every night to have unprotected sex (umm, not that I would, or would want to). Nor does it mean we don't need to test the meat for pathogens (just like my vaccine doesn't mean I no longer require annual pap smears).
And yet, the USDA tests ground beef up to 4 times per month but STILL doesn't have the legal authority to shut down a plant that consistently fails its tests. And who knows how often the processing plants actually test for pathogens - or if they actually throw out tainted meat when their tests find any. We know from the peanut and pistachio salmonella outbreaks earlier this year that those companies still sold the tainted nuts even AFTER they tested positive for salmonella.
Once the food safety bill passes (assuming it does) food companies regulated by the FDA will be required to report positive test results to the FDA - but beef falls under the USDA and so they won't be affected by the new law. Pathetic. |
