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chapters explain, everyone takes a risk when eating uncooked foods, but the extent of that risk is uncertain. In the absence of better oversight of safety at the production end, federal agencies now advise us to follow safety guidelines that used to be reserved for travelers to developing countries. Such advice converts the act of eating to a matter of risk management rather than of nourishment or pleasure, and must be understood as a political act in itself. Because federal policies cannot ensure that food is safe before people bring it home, government agencies shift the burden of responsibility to consumers. Of course all of us should learn to prepare foods properly, but the industry can and should do its share as well.

As these chapters explain, for reasons of history, inertia, turf disputes, and just plain greed, government oversight of food safety has long tended to provide far more protection to food producers than to the public. Only in recent years, when foodborne illness began to raise serious issues of liability, have food companies and federal agencies been forced to consider measures—albeit grudgingly—to prevent microbial pathogens in food.

Like the events related to the StarLink affair, those recounted in these chapters reflect certain recurrent themes. With respect to government, one theme is the fragmented, overlapping, and ultimately obstructive distribution of authority between two federal agencies: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA). Another is the historic closeness of working relationships among congressional agriculture committees, federal regulatory agencies, and food producers. We will see how food producers repeatedly deny responsibility for foodborne illness, invoke science to promote self-interest and divert public attention from harm caused by their products, and express outright hostility to federal oversight. From the standpoint of consumer advocacy, an additional theme bears on the ways in which food safety relates to much broader societal concerns. As Eric Schlosser discussed so compellingly in Fast Food Nation (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), much of the actual work in the food industry—in agriculture, slaughterhouses, processing plants, and places where food is served—is carried out by immigrants, teenagers, and other groups paid the minimum wage. People can only produce safe food if they know how to do so, if they follow the rules, and if they are themselves in good health. Thus, the production of safe food also depends on the adequacy of fundamental social support systems such as public education and health care.

In this part of the book, chapter 1 sets the stage by reviewing the origins of the present system of governmental oversight of food safety. Chapters 2 and 3 review some of the landmark incidents leading to the current “crisis” over bacterial pathogens. They also explain how government agencies attempted to deal with such crises in the face of resistance by food producers and processors. In chapter 4, I discuss some political alternatives for improving oversight of our food safety system.

For the most part, these chapters focus on the actions of producers and processors of meat—in this case, beef. Unlike the producers of most other foods, the beef industry makes little attempt to hide its self-interested political activities. Beef industry pressures on Congress and federal regulators are more transparent than those of other food industries, and are better documented. Nevertheless, many of the food safety issues raised by beef production are similar to matters that affect poultry, eggs, seafood (especially the farmed variety), and pork, as well as to those that affect fruits and vegetables inadvertently contaminated as they move from farm to table, sometimes from one country to another.

CHAPTER 1

THE POLITICS

OF FOODBORNE ILLNESS

ISSUES AND ORIGINS

IN THE EARLY 1970S, A TIME WHEN FOOD SAFETY WAS BECOMING a matter of public debate, my young family went to a dinner hosted by a colleague. I don’t remember much about the party,