Last year, in quick succession, serious health concerns arose with assorted Chinese imports including dog and cat foods, diethylene glycol-laced toothpaste, filthy or pesticide-drenched mushrooms and old, decomposed fish packed in carbon monoxide-infused packaging to make it appear fresh. In recent years, we’ve also suffered outbreaks of food-borne illness from Latin American produce.
We haven’t been immune to food safety problems here in the US, either, but maybe the “eat local” folks are onto something. Really, there is no way to make the food supply perfectly safe. But most of us who shop at the neighborhood supermarket believe we can depend on the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to be aggressive in monitoring the safety of our food supply, whether it is domestic or imported. The problem is they don’t have the resources. A report recently issued by the FDA Science Board concluded that the nation’s food supply is at risk and poses danger to consumers in large part because the FDA is desperately short of money and poorly organized. The report noted that in the past 20 years the agency’s public health responsibilities have vastly increased — while the staff and budget have not. It’s an unfair situation and a frightening one, too.
For further insight into problems with the FDA and food safety, I spoke with Michael Doyle, PhD, director of the University of Georgia (UGA) Center for Food Safety and a renowned expert on E. coli bacteria and other food-borne pathogens. He assured me that the US food supply is still among the safest in the world. He is, however, extremely concerned about the dangers inherent in our increasing reliance on imported foods. We now import more foods than we export and within 20 years Dr. Doyle says we will likely be importing more food than we produce here in the US. This creates quality control problems of enormous magnitude.
Right now, about 15% of the food we eat is imported from other countries — including 84% of seafood and 43% of non-citrus fresh fruits. Of course, it’s not all bad — food coming from countries with rigorous sanitary standards like those we have here in the US are generally safe, says Dr. Doyle. These include Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the countries of Western Europe. In countries within Central and South America, safe food production and handling practices vary. In some locations, hygienic practices for growing and harvesting foods are similar to or better than here in the US while in other areas they are grossly substandard. Mistakes can happen anywhere — witness last winter’s outbreak of E. coli linked to bagged spinach from California — but the likelihood that food-borne illnesses such as E. coli and Salmonella will arise is far higher in foods produced under unsanitary conditions.
Unfortunately, many imported foods come from countries that use dangerously polluted water for growing and processing. When Dr. Doyle described some of the farming techniques used in China, Vietnam and Thailand, I felt sick to my stomach. For example, he said it is a centuries-old practice there to use human excrement as fertilizer on fields. Outhouses are often erected over ponds where fish are farmed and chickens are raised in huge pens directly over them as well, as excrement is considered fertilizer for the fish… yet it’s no surprise that if not properly cleaned and processed, it’s also a source of contamination with potentially deadly Salmonella.
And then there is the problem of pesticides. Not only do many countries use carcinogenic pesticides now illegal in the US, they use them in excessive levels, Dr. Doyle warns. China and other countries use pesticides like DDT, which has been banned in the US since 1972. And Mexico has also had many problems with pesticide residues on produce.
It’s an issue of very serious concern, says Dr. Doyle. He predicts the number and frequency of food-borne illnesses will escalate as the percentage of imported foods rises. He believes the FDA needs to reinvent itself in order to ensure the safety of our food supply. The FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition has lost 30% of its operating resources since 2003 and about 8% to 14% of its staff since 2003. This funding and staff needs to be reinstated, at the very least. The FDA also needs an extreme technological makeover. Many of the current testing methods are decades old, and better sampling and testing protocols must be developed to verify that foods — especially those that are imported, since laws on sanitation vary — are safe.
Recently, the FDA announced new voluntary fresh-cut produce standards in response to the intense focus on the dangers of food contaminants. Large domestic produce processors are calling for more stringent regulation for all, themselves included — mandatory, not voluntary. We need to level the playing field for domestic and international producers, Dr. Doyle explains. When all food producers are required by law to follow the same level of sanitation guidelines, we will all be healthier — consumers and industry alike.
In the meantime, what steps can you and I take to be sure the foods we buy are clean and safe? I’ve written before about the safe handling of food, but in many cases this isn’t enough. Types of contamination include microbiological (such as bacteria) and chemical (pesticides or antibiotics). Proper cooking takes care of most, though not all, microbiological contamination. However with some pesticides, the application of heat does little to address contamination and even vigilant rinsing and washing doesn’t offer complete protection.
In the long run, we will all make our own decisions about foods, based on individual health and budget considerations. But in Dr. Doyle’s view, the only way to stay completely safe from potentially contaminated imported foods — that is, foods from countries with insufficient safety standards — is not to buy them. In my neighborhood, farmers markets are now open nearly half the year, spring through fall. This is of no help in the winter months, but at least during the local growing season I can purchase regionally grown produce with confidence not only in its origins but also that I’m helping to support the local economy — that’s a double win, in my view.
