Walk around any grocery store and look at what's for sale. Lots of colorful boxes and bags – but what's in them? Who grew the food and what happened to it between the farm and the store? Knowing where your food comes from and how it is grown is a vital and fascinating part of healthy living. The Kitchen Table Gazette will be a lively monthly column that looks inside the food system and brings you interesting facts about the social and environmental side of food, the lives of farmers, and the connections we can make to nature and to each other through food. We will cover the problems and the solutions facing the food system. We will discuss the dramatic changes created by industrialized agriculture and hazardous technologies such as genetic engineering, irradiation and pesticides as well as bring you stories about the growing new food movement that promotes local, seasonal, food grown by farmers who are linked directly with consumers and who use sustainable and organic methods.

We're starting with a fundamental concern: food safety. This month is an overview. Over the next few months we will explore specific topics in more depth. Each month we will provide links and resources, so you can find out more on your own and take action.

Food Safety I
While food safety is something we are all care about, there is a limit to what consumers can do to ensure safe food handling, storing and preparation. So, what are government agencies, growers and food processors doing to prevent contamination in the first place?

Food safety regulation goes back to Upton Sinclair's novel, The Jungle, published in 1906, which told of unsanitary conditions in stockyards and meat packing plants. The resulting public outcry led to new laws and government programs. Almost a century later, we have another jungle to contend with–a jumble of disconnected laws and agencies that are supposed to oversee food safety, but which, consumer advocacy group Public Citizen says, are actually making the situation worse.

Our fragmented regulatory structure is made up of 12 federal government agencies as well as various state and local governments who inspect, investigate and enforce a patchwork of rules and regulations, some of which are outdated and many of which are inadequate.

Although a 1998 National Academy of Sciences report recommended restructuring the system and appointment of a "food safety czar," Public Citizen says such a move will not result in improved food safety. They are concerned that a central bureaucracy will give agribusiness more ways to avoid food safety measures. And it appears that regulation has been favoring industry. Since the deregulation days of the Reagan White House, in industry is left to monitor itself and new laws rely not on government inspection as much as on voluntary reporting. The current system does little to address common causes of contamination, such as high speed meat packing lines, or deal with the lack of corporate accountability.

The food industry is now leading an effort in Congress to drastically cut back on a state's ability to set food safety standards. Known as the National Uniformity for Food Act of 2000 (S.1155) it would restrict a state's ability to set tough standards. To find out more about this bill and about what action to take, click here: http://www.purefood.org/Organic/Stealthbill.cfm

Food safety has changed from the time of cholera outbreaks and before pasteurization. There are still frightening outbreaks of E coli and other common infections in everything from meat to fruit juice and the Center for Disease Control estimates that there are up to 9,000 deaths and over 76 million illnesses cause by food contamination each year in the U.S.

On September 7th Public Citizen's Government Accountability Project said that Americans face a greater risk of contaminated meat because the USDA allows companies to perform their own inspections. We will look at that study here next month. Our concern should be that as rules are relaxed, food processors will be using other toxic technologies like food irradiation to cover up contamination, rather than cleaning up the feed in the first place.

Today, the most important issues in food safety are recent problems–such as disease organisms that are resistant to antibiotics and the new toxic technologies like genetically engineered crops, irradiation, pesticides, sewage sludge, antibiotics and hormones in animals, growth hormones in dairy cows, and animal feeding practices that cause mad cow disease.

With these new pathogens and novel threats, food contamination may not just be a stomach ache anymore. Rapid changes taking place in the food system increase the dangers, and some reports say, this has increased the number of food contamination cases. For example, food is increasingly imported from countries with very lax standards, and it slips through customs or is not adequately monitored. And because of national food distribution systems, when an outbreak occurs, it can rapidly become a widespread public health threat.

The key is to know where your food comes from, to buy from producers that you know and trust – such as local organic farmers or food manufacturers, and to insist on high safety standards and a regulatory system that is accountable to the public, not the corporate food industry.

Resources to find out more about Food Safety:

Consumer advocacy groups:
Organic Consumers Association
Public Citizen
Links to most of the government agencies and initiatives involved can be found through the National Food Safety Initiative.

USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service Home Page

Yahoo's web page on food safety

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Claire Hope Cummings produces and hosts a weekly radio show on food and farming. She is a writer, a lawyer and is active in the growing new food movement that is working to reinvigorate local food systems and support sustainable, organic family farms. She has been a farmer, both in California and in Vietnam, and was an environmental litigator for 18 years, as well as formerly staff counsel at the USDA.

Claire enjoys growing food in her large organic garden and does native plant restoration on her land in Marin County, California. She is the author of two guides to agricultural genetic engineering, has published numerous articles on food, and is a popular public speaker. Her radio show is broadcast live at 7:30 AM every Tuesday morning on KPFA–FM in Berkeley, KFCF in Fresno, or on the web at that time at www.kpfa.org.