Presidential eating

I love this picture! No matter how you might have felt about the results of the recent presidential election, I think you might share my appreciation of this image of a hungry man who just looks so happy to be sitting down to a meal.

As it happens, of course, this is no ordinary hungry man. (Nor is My Prince--ordinary, that is. He's always game for a good meal.) The picture accompanied an article about how President Obama can change the way our country eats and goes on to provide an intriguing list:

• He’s expected to support local and organic farmers
• Food prices may go down…or up
• Food safety should improve
• School nutrition will be in the spotlight

These are interesting items that will, no doubt, provide for some interesting debates about food policy. The one that most interests me at the moment is food safety and the article's speculation about funding for the FDA:

Working with the Obama administration, a Democratic-led Congress will likely be able to pass legislation that boosts the FDA’s oversight and pays for more food inspections, especially after the numerous and dangerous food scares of the last four years.

I know that some folks would argue that more regulation is just not what we need in the current economy, but I'm on the opposite side when it comes to food safety. We need more, not fewer food inspections.

Consider the current outbreak of salmonella and the impact that it has had on our economy. (Well, yes, there's that pesky health thing, but it's the money thing that is used to argue against more food inspections.) So far, more than 500 cases of salmonellosis have been reported (with many more likely unreported) in the current outbreak. For these individuals, there is incurred health care cost, loss of work (and, for some, loss of income), the multiplier effect of cost and loss when one family member's illness affects other family members' ability to work or function in their normal role (think caregiver, think mommy takes daddy to the hospital), etc. For their employers, there may be health care costs, especially if the company self-insures, and there may be loss of productivity/profit while a worker is absent from work.

This, of course, is small potatoes really. A mere 400 cases is pretty insignificant, given the size of much larger epidemics of HIV, diabetes, etc. With a death toll of 8, as heartbreaking as those deaths are to the families who suffered the loss, it's a small outbreak.

But now the public health folks are attributing the outbreak to peanuts. Whoa! I think maybe the only thing more ubiquitous in our food supply is corn. OK, wheat, sugar, chocolate are right up there, but peanuts are everywhere. Peanut butter is practically a food staple for some age groups. And, whatever the source of these peanuts, the outbreak has already spread to 42 US states. This is a much bigger outbreak than the numbers suggest. The wide geographical distribution alone makes it more than a little worrisome. The popularity of the food source makes it even more troublesome (unlike, say, spinach, which more folks would be happy to avoid in the first place).

What difference to the economy? Start with food recalls. That's gotta hurt--and that's only the products made by or from products made by Peanut Corporation of America. (PCA has been identified as the source of this outbreak.) What about peanut related products from other companies? Not recalled, no, but often tarred with the same brush, if you will. Consumers, hearing news reports about the salmonella outbreak, are certain to hear the word "peanut," not at all certain to remember the particular company involved. Could that mean a drop in consumption of all peanut products from all producers? A similar outbreak earlier in 2008 put a kink in tomato sales before jalapenos were finally identified as the source of the problem. So add to the cost of the outbreak the public relations damage to all things peanut and the effort that has to be made to identify what is actually safe.

Money, of course, doesn't count when a loved one is lost, but with 8 deaths to its credit, I also can see PCA subjected to at least 8 wrongful death suits, not to mention all the others for medical costs and such. This will give some money churn for legal fees, but I don't know that that will be an overall benefit to the economy.

Now, there are a couple of caveats that have to be made before going too far afield on the subject of regulation and inspection.

1. Peanut Corporation of America already knew that its products contained salmonella and shipped them anyway. No additional regulations would have helped in this case, although additional inspections might have. A corporation determined to place profit above public health could probably circumvent such inspections anyway.
2. The FDA, an agency that I generally respect, especially on the worker bee level, may not have been the heroes of the 2008 could-it-be-tomatoes salmonella outbreak. Floundering around, issuing conflicting advisories, and devastating producers doesn't seem like the most useful way to go about protecting the food supply.

I tend to think that more inspections would be better--I guess I'm just that kind of gal. However, if our Eater-in-Chief is going to try to make a difference in food safety, he might need to think about the role of competence in the earlier epidemic and the need for enforcement in the current epidemic. The point, however is this: preventing such an outbreak will still be cheaper than allowing one to happen. Improving food safety would, I think, be part of a valid approach to helping a troubled economy.