Food safety nightmare

Last week, I participated in the White House civil society listening session on the new Food Safety Working Group. I made the point that we need to hold imports to the same standards and regulations we hold domestic products and producers, that the agencies need the funding and authority to do so, and that our trade agreements need to be renegotiated to favor non-discriminatory, food-safety regulations. Aspects of these principles are in language supported by Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), as well as in the Brown-Michaud TRADE Act.

In addition to other public and NGO consumer advocates, there was a heavy industry presence at this listening session. After reading this article in the New York Times, I seriously questioned whether we can expect any positive food-safety reforms to come from these people:

Increasingly, the corporations that supply Americans with processed foods are unable to guarantee the safety of their ingredients. In this case, ConAgra could not pinpoint which of the more than 25 ingredients in its pies was carrying salmonella. Other companies do not even know who is supplying their ingredients, let alone if those suppliers are screening the items for microbes and other potential dangers, interviews and documents show...

government efforts to impose tougher trace-back requirements for ingredients have met with resistance from food industry groups including the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which complained to the Food and Drug Administration: “This information is not reasonably needed and it is often not practical or possible to provide it.”

What? These companies are going on the record to admit that they have no idea where they get their ingredients from? Companies inability to even comply with transparency initiatives should be a national embarrassment. These companies should at a minimum have their corporate charters revoked for negligence. They certainly should not be helping to shape our food and trade policies.