Recalls: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You
We are now approaching the three-month mark in the recall of contaminated pet foods and several things are clear. Most notable is that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has done a scandalously poor job of staying on top things and has been painfully slow to acknowledge that the human food chain also is affected.
This much we know (or don’t know):
* The number of dogs and cats affected by the bad food is simply unknown.
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration official said last week during a news media teleconference that although some 5,300 pet food products had been recalled the number of reported fatalities was only “in the high teens,” as in 18 or 19. He was contradicted two days later by an FDA press release that pegged deaths at about 2,200 dogs and 1,950 cats. Anecdotal reports put the numbers higher.
* It is not unusual for the source of contaminants in food recalls to be elusive.
But it was the news media, prodded in part by bloggers, and not the FDA that first pointed a finger at Chinese-export wheat gluten and rice protein laced with melamine, used in the manufacture of plastics, to increase protein and profit levels. This is only the latest effort by Chinese manufacturers to dupe U.S. food processors into believing that they are buying a quality product.
* Suspicions that melamine also was showing up in the human food chain were debunked by the FDA.
And then on Monday the agency dropped a bombshell, explaining in an import alert that it “is enforcing a new import alert that greatly expands its curtailment of some food ingredients imported from China, authorizing border inspectors to detain ingredients used in everything from noodles to breakfast bars.â€
To date, the contaminants have showed up in chicken feed in Indiana and in hogs in several states that were fed contaminated pet food. The FDA and Department of Agriculture said they have not ordered recalls because the likelihood of human illness from eating chicken or pigs fed the contaminants is very low. Also, a survey of poison control centers and hospitals by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found no increase in reports of kidney diseases, the most likely indicator of melamine poisoning.
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6 Responses to “Recalls: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You”
This is a valid reason to justify a semi-boycott of all products related to China and Walmart. China has a history of criminal commerce(pirated movies and s/w) to make a consumer boycott possible. Maybe pictures of Fido on dialysis…
Nah. That horse long ago left the barn. Besides which, American commerce is not exacxtly crime free.
SM Agreed, but the “boycott” is for the most part a personal choice, US commerce is just as criminal and partisn. A little OT, I love B Gates as a humanitarian but hate MS. Apple has always had superior h/w and s/w ( Windows is ripp off of Apples OS) but lacked any impact on mainstream buissness applications. I regrettibly own a MS based PC only because of shared s/w with schools and work.
I agree with Shaun about the horse, buggy and barn.
Still, I can’t help reflecting how the global economy undermines the powers of governments.
Multinational corporations form subsidiaries to operate under all kinds of governments and systems, by extension supporting all of them. No value system applies.
So much of our food supply is imported, and it’s impossible for the US to oversee what happens in production. The adequate inspections Shaun wants would be so costly as to upset the whole applecart. As it is, it seems inevitable that only a health crisis would provoke the needed extra attention.
Even home grown foods present problems. Organic foods are pricier and local produce less available.
Sometimes it’s good to be old enough to not see where the road ends.
Yesterday I heard someone being interviewed on NPR put the FDA’s role in perspective. Imports of food products from foreign countries up 400%. Number of inspectors the FDA has available down 14%. Didn’t you know government interference in the free markets in any way is an abomination according to the First Church of Free Market? Inspectors? They don’t need no steeenking inspectors.
Domajot:
Your observation that a burgeoning global economy undermines the power of governments is astute because the global economy is itself a government of sort with “laws” that go far beyond supply and demand.
Jim:
I was particularly careful to not inject the Bush bashing deregulatory meme into my post. It is my supposition that the FDA’s problems have not gotten materially worse over the past six-plus years because they were pretty bad to begin with.