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Keep Government’s Hands Off Our Food? Next Time You Read about an Outbreak of Salmonella or E. coli, Thank Jack Kingston (R-GA)

Manic House Republicans voted last Thursday to de-fund the implementation of a landmark law, passed just a few months ago, to strengthen Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) authority to police tainted food. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), chairman of the House subcommittee that wrote the agriculture appropriations bill, announced on the House floor that the cuts were justified because the nation's food supply was “99.99 percent safe.” 

“Do we believe that McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken and Safeway and Kraft Food and any brand name that you think of, that these people aren't concerned about food safety?,” Kingston said. “The food supply in America is very safe because the private sector self-polices, because they have the highest motivation. They don't want to be sued, they don't want to go broke.  They want their customers to be healthy and happy.”

Sadly for Kingston, history’s not on his side. And in his case, it’s some fairly local history. In the fall of 2008, a salmonella outbreak in the United States claimed at least nine lives and made about 660 people sick. After considerable sleuthing, scientists traced the outbreak back to a peanut processing plant about 100 miles from Kingston’s congressional district. It turned out that the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) had deliberately shipped peanut paste from its Blakely, Georgia, plant that it knew had been found in tests to have salmonella. The paste was used in hundreds of products made by other food manufacturers. When the FBI and FDA investigators converged on the plant, they found a slew of outright safety violations including a leaking roof, mold growing on ceilings and walls, rodent infestation, filthy nut processing receptacles, and feathers and feces in the air filtration system. The outbreak cost the peanut industry alone more than $1 billion, more than enough to provide the $995 million that President Obama requested to fund the FDA’s food safety initiatives for the next fiscal year.

As for the proposition that Fortune 100 companies care about food safety, Kingston is right, but the point is irrelevant.  Companies like Kellogg and Nestlé do their best to protect themselves from unscrupulous processors, hiring third-party inspectors to audit their suppliers. But the Georgia plant had received a “superior” rating from a private audit firm working on behalf of Kellogg--American Institute of Baking International (AIB)--barely a year before the outbreak, although a second auditing team hired by Nestlé had turned in such a damning report that the company stopped buying PCA products. So much for self-regulation.

Little wonder, then, that the Grocery Manufacturers of America and most other industry groups supported passage of the bill, which imposed fees on regulated entities to help pay for regulatory efforts in order to reduce the expense of the system for taxpayers. So Representative Kingston is not even carrying the food industry’s water when he presses to slash funding for the FDA. More likely it’s just anti-government, anti-regulatory reflex – a reflex so strong it’s able to overcome reason, history and experience.   

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Rena Steinzor | June 21, 2011

Keep Government’s Hands Off Our Food? Next Time You Read about an Outbreak of Salmonella or E. coli, Thank Jack Kingston (R-GA)

Manic House Republicans voted last Thursday to de-fund the implementation of a landmark law, passed just a few months ago, to strengthen Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) authority to police tainted food. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), chairman of the House subcommittee that wrote the agriculture appropriations bill, announced on the House floor that the cuts were […]

Daniel Farber | June 20, 2011

Supreme Court Ruling in The American Electric Power Case

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. The Supreme Court decided the AEP case.  The jurisdictional issues (standing and the political question doctrine) got punted.  The Court said that the lower court rulings were affirmed by an equally divided court.  So far as I know, this is the first time that the Court has ever done that and […]

Matthew Freeman | June 20, 2011

Chamber of Commerce Gets the Law Wrong in its Argument to the White House Against Listing BPA as a Chemical of Concern

As part of its ongoing campaign to derail health, safety, and environmental regulations that it regards as inconvenient to industry, the Chamber of Commerce sent a letter earlier this month to Cass Sunstein, Administrator of the White Hosue Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, calling on him to push the EPA to suspend an initiative […]

Matthew Freeman | June 17, 2011

Administration Pandering to Anti-Regulatory Business Leaders Gets Cold Shoulder

The Washington Post reports today on the White House’s latest failed effort to extract political gain from the President’s misguided “regulatory look-back,” led with disturbing enthusiasm by Cass Sunstein, administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The story tells us a lot about the thinking of the man who controls access […]

Robert Verchick | June 12, 2011

Climate Change Meets the Little Mermaid

Copenhagen—Denmark’s famed “Little Harbor Lady,” or in English, “Little Mermaid,” has had her share of antics and perils. She’s been photographed by millions in Copenhagen’s harbor, carted off and shown at the 2010 World Fair in Shanghai, beheaded (several times), dynamited, splashed with pink paint, and enveloped in a Burqua. An environmental nerd for all […]

Yee Huang | June 10, 2011

New CPR Report Proposes Strategies for Climate Change Adaptation in the Puget Sound

The scope of climate change impacts is expected to be extraordinary, touching every ecosystem on the planet and affecting human interactions with the natural and built environment. From increased surface and water temperatures to sea level rise and more frequent extreme weather events, climate change promises vast and profound alterations to our world. Indeed, scientists predict continued […]

Matt Shudtz | June 9, 2011

EPA Pulls Back the Curtain on More CBI Claims Regarding Toxic Chemicals’ Safety

EPA announced Wednesday that staff from the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention are making good on a promise to give the public increased access to health and safety studies about the toxic chemicals that pervade our lives. I applaud EPA for their work. Until Congress reforms TSCA to free EPA’s hand in regulating toxic chemicals, […]

Ben Somberg | June 7, 2011

Pawlenty Attacks Government ‘Bureaucrats’ For Shower Efficiency Requirements Enacted by Congress, Signed by George H.W. Bush

How easy it is to make fun of those out-of-control, unelected government bureaucrats! The examples of their wild behavior are just so plentiful. Here’s Tim Pawlenty in his big economic speech this morning (prepared remarks, video): Conservatives have long made the federal bureaucracy the butt of jokes. And considering some of the bureaucrats in Washington, […]

Robert Verchick | June 5, 2011

Notes from the 2nd World Congress on Cities and Adaptation to Climate Change

Bonn–At a climate conference in Germany, with lager in hand, I was prepared to ponder nearly any environmental insult or failure. But rat pee? Really?  The urine of rats, as it turns out, is known to transmit the leptospirosis bacteria which can lead to high fever, bad headaches, vomiting, and diarrhea. During summer rainstorms in São Paulo, Brazil, […]