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limit antibiotics in animal feed, prevent infections in transported animals, test for microbes at slaughterhouses and supermarkets, and provide incentives to the industry to comply with safety rules. Our government could also take such actions. That it does not is a result of an entrenched political system that allows federal regulators to avoid enforcing their own rules, and food companies to deny responsibility and blame each other, the regulators, or the public whenever outbreaks occur. Rather than collaborating to reduce foodborne pathogens, the agencies and companies shift attention to consumer education as the best way to ensure safe food. Failing that, they call for foods to be irradiated or pasteurized. This chapter examines the education, irradiation, and pasteurization alternatives along with two others: using the courts to impose legal liability for foodborne illness, and reorganizing government to consolidate and improve oversight of food safety.

Before addressing these alternatives, we need to deal with one further issue: food imports. Pathogen Reduction: HACCP applies to domestic food production. The countries from which we import fruits, vegetables, and other foods do not necessarily follow such rules. Because food imports are influenced (if not governed) by international trade agreements, methods to ensure food safety must also take such agreements into consideration.

IMPORTING SAFE FOOD: THE POLITICS OF FOOD TRADE

We live in a global economy with a global food supply. If we insist on having fresh strawberries and tomatoes in January (beyond those grown in our southern states), we have to buy them from countries with warmer climates. In 2000, the United States imported fresh and processed foods worth nearly $49 billion (including about $8 billion worth of fruits, vegetables, and juices), many of them from places with lower standards of water quality and sanitation. Imported foods have caused notable outbreaks: Hepatitis A from Mexican strawberries, Vibrio from Thai coconut pudding, E. coli O157:H7 from French semisoft cheeses, Staphylococcus from Chinese canned mushrooms. That we do not experience more episodes of illness is nothing less than miraculous, a tribute more to our healthy immune systems, the benefits of cooking and food preservation, and plain good luck than to federal oversight.1

Any system for grappling with the safety of imported food must deal with the usual two agencies, neither with anywhere near the resources required for this task. The USDA samples about 20% of imported meat and poultry products and rejects those from countries that do not meet our safety standards; it holds the “right of equivalency.” In contrast, the FDA does not have this right and cannot reject imported foods that fail to meet our standards. This enforcement gap is not for lack of trying. FDA Commissioner David Kessler specifically requested the right of equivalency in 1993, and the General Accounting Office (GAO) called on Congress to grant it in 1998. Until recently, the FDA inspected less than 1% of the imported foods under its jurisdiction, down from 8% in 1992. In response to concerns about “homeland security,” the level doubled—to 2%—in 2002. The FDA’s challenge is daunting: in the late 1990s, it employed just 113 inspectors to examine 3 million food shipments flowing through 309 ports of entry to the United States. Yet at the Laredo, Texas, crossing point alone, 1.3 million trucks from Mexico enter the country each year. In 1997, Congress allotted $41 million to improve food inspection across the entire nation. At the same time, it granted $230 million for narcotics control, just for the Southwest border with Mexico. Food safety has never been a Congressional priority and, as we will see in the concluding chapter, it still is not.2

Trade works both ways; we exported about $54 billion worth of food products in 2000. Food exports represent 20% of the value of U.S. agricultural production and about one-third of our total harvest. The ability to sell agricultural products abroad is a critically important factor