29 November 2010 GOP opposes food safety

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/opinion/29schlosser.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a212

A Stale Food Fight

By MICHAEL POLLAN and ERIC SCHLOSSER

Published: November 28, 2010

“Theodore Roosevelt ran up against the same sort of resistance when he fought for the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. “Unfortunately,” he said, “the misdeeds of those who are responsible for the abuses we design to cure will bring discredit and damage not only upon them, but upon the innocent stock growers, the ranchmen and farmers of this country.” That is one reason the federal government decided to guarantee food safety during the last century — and why it must continue to do so in this one. “

Cassi Creek:

As usual, the GOP has come down firmly on the side of letting corporations endanger the public.

“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 5,000 Americans annually die from a food-borne illness”

After working in clinical labs for over 30 years, I can assure you that the CDC figures are low. Not lowered intentionally, but lower because of poor reporting to CDC. This is not due to any conspiracy or other effort to lower such rates of infection, thus making things look better than they are in an effort to negate the need for CDC and the FDA. Rather, this is the result of poor record keeping and handling, poor diagnostic skills, poor use of diagnostic studies and other factors.

Patients will provide poor histories, obscuring the source of such infections. Some patients may recover without sequelae, may be infected but display minimal or no symptoms, patients may self-medicate. Physicians working with poor patient histories may miss symptoms or see the patient after the patient has recovered. Financial (insurance) constraints may prevent adequate diagnostic workup, missing some infections. Even if all other factors are applied correctly, patient sampling for lab studies may be inadequate, incorrectly done, or not done at all.

Medical facilities may neglect to file reports of such infections in appropriate and timely manner. Such reports are not high priority items for under-paid, over-worked office staff who usually are tasked with such reports that should be generated, instead, at the point of isolation and identification. Politics becomes a factor when such automatic reporting is raised. Many providers don’t want the hassle of filling out infectious disease report forms but also don’t want a lab issuing such reports about their patients.

Suffice it to say that the reported instances of food-borne infectious diseases are severely under-reported. This plays well for the GOP in their continuing effort to strip such agencies as CDC and FDA from existence. The public, which must rely on the FDA for assurances of food safety, is being poorly served, placed at risk of serious illness by a political party that values corporate bribes far more than the “general welfare.’

With the influx of teavangelists into the House and Senate, it’s beginning to look as if the only thing that may save the public from losing what protection the current FDA and CDC provide is, perhaps, a nice late D.C. spring picnic featuring lots of imported Mexican lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers, (the Salmonella sources) and some hurriedly grilled fast food burgers (the E. coli contribution).

Bon Appetite