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and personnel resources, but has little clout with Congress. One reason for its relatively low status is industry lobbying against regulations perceived as unfriendly. A more profound reason is rooted in the history discussed here. Because the FDA began as a division of the USDA, its budget allocations still come from congressional agriculture committees—not those concerned with health. Such committees view the FDA’s strictly science-based regulatory posture as unfriendly to agriculture and to business (witness the FDA’s unsuccessful attempt to regulate tobacco as a drug), and they react accordingly.

Within FDA itself, the regulation of microbial hazards in food seems less important than dealing with drugs or medical devices. In my six years as a member of the FDA’s Food Advisory Committee and, later, its Science Board, I often observed the agency’s resistance to criticism—even from groups supportive of its mission—and its apparent perception of food issues as troublesome and unscientific rather than as challenging problems demanding a high priority and focused attention. The FDA’s priorities, of course, also are shaped by budget restrictions and by congressional interventions, industry lawsuits, and intense pressures related to other food issues under its domain: food labeling, health claims, dietary supplements, and—as I explain in part 2 of this book—genetically modified foods.

Even this brief overview suggests why efforts to control foodborne microbes are likely to prove contentious. Food safety politics involves diverse stakeholders with highly divergent goals. In an environment of food overabundance, food producers must compete for shares of the consumer’s food dollar. One way to do this is by taking advantage of a divided, inconsistent, and illogical federal regulatory system. Food companies owe their primary allegiance to stockholders, and their principal goal must be profit, not public health. Whenever safety measures raise costs or intrude on autonomy, the affected industries mobilize their considerable political power to block actions perceived as unfavorable—even when such measures are strongly supported by science (example: antibiotics). Government regulatory agencies also engage in competition, in this case among themselves for scarce resources and territorial mandates. As we will see, they often appear to be more concerned about protecting their own turf—or that of the industries they regulate—than about protecting the health of consumers. The public, unaware of such disputes, simply wants food to be safe and assumes that both industry and government share that goal and are doing everything possible to achieve it.

In this environment, the various participants in the food system blame one another (but never themselves) when outbreaks occur. The costs of foodborne illness to individuals, to society, and to food companies should encourage everyone to collaborate in efforts to ensure safe food. That the groups do not collaborate is a curious consequence of food safety politics. In the remaining chapters in part 1 we will see how the initial distinctions in the legal mandates of the USDA and FDA affected their dealings with the food industries they regulate—particularly meat producers and processors—as the agencies attempted to protect the public against microbial illnesses transmitted through food.

CHAPTER 2

RESISTING MEAT AND POULTRY REGULATION, 1974–1994

IN CHAPTER 1, WE SAW HOW THE INITIAL DIVISION OF FOOD safety oversight between two federal agencies led to a system poorly equipped to deal with food pathogens. In this chapter and the next, we will see how century-old laws affected government responses to incidents caused by newly emergent pathogens, and how food producers used those laws to avoid having to change their practices. Because food animals are the ultimate source of pathogens, these chapters focus on disputes over meat safety, particularly those that involve attempts by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to require the meat and poultry industries to control pathogens. Although