Media people love juicy data suggesting an untended-to crisis, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has the perfect juicy data for anyone wanting to write about the supposed crisis in food safety.
The scary data go like this: every year, millions of Americans are victims of food-borne illness–48 million become sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die.
The media are attracted to this data like bees to honey. Over just the last few days, two prominent food writers have used it as the basis of articles attacking the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for not doing enough to solve our food-safety crisis.
Barry Estabrook, author of the highly acclaimed book Tomatoland, wrote a scathing article on the site ONEARTH, attacking the FDA.
The article, The FDA Is Out to Lunch, begins with an example of an elderly man who died a miserable death from eating cantaloupe contaminated with listeria, and then states: The 2011 listeria outbreak was not an isolated case. The United States is experiencing what amounts to an epidemic of food-borne illnesses. According to the CDC, there are about 48 million cases of food poisoning a year, leading to more than 128,000 hospitalizations and more than 3,000 deaths…the toll from food-borne bacteria is mind-numbing.
Another prominent food writer, Tom Laskawy, executive director of the Food & Environment Reporting Network, picked up on the Estabrook attack, in an article on Grist, Food Safety Fail: Why Isnt the Agency in Charge of Keeping Us Safe Succeeding?
As Estabrook reports, were in the midst of a food poisoning epidemic. According to the CDC, there are about 48 million cases of food poisoning a year, leading to more than 128,000 hospitalizations and more than 3,000 deaths, he writes. To put that last statistic in perspective, its the equivalent of a 9/11 tragedy every year. Youd think the government (and the American people) might want to do something to stop it.
I need to point out at this point that not only are Estabrook and Laskawy highly credible food and agriculture writers, but they arent the first to accept the CDC data as fact and use it to argue vehemently we have a food safety crisis. I used the data in my book, The Raw Milk Revolution, to suggest that illnesses associated with raw milk are miniscule by comparison to the overall crisis in food safety suggested by the same CDC data.
As readers of this blog know, Im not a big supporter of the FDA. But after studying the CDCs crisis-epidemic data, Ive come to believe its highly flawed. There are lots of things to attack the FDA about, such as its absence of effective enforcement actions against corporate abusers of food-safety regulations, but its failure to solve the epidemic of food safety illnesses isnt one of them, in my judgment.
My reasoning: As seductive as the data is, its difficult to examine it on even a cursory basis and not conclude it is full of holes. Here are just a few of the most obvious ones:
* Most of the illnesses that comprise the CDCs estimates arent from the most common pathogens–the ones that made people sick in the widely known cantaloupe, peanut butter, spinach, egg, or ground beef outbreaks. Those illnesses were caused by listeria, salmonella, campylobacter, and E.coi O157:H7, yet the CDC says 38.4 million of the estimated 48 million illnesses (three-fourths of its estimate) were caused by unknown agents.
Even the CDC had to admit that the estimate of 38.4 million illnesses from unknown agents was, shall we say, sketchy. Because you cant track what isnt yet identified, estimates for this group of agents started with the health effects or symptoms that they are most likely to causeacute gastroenteritis. Mind you, CDC didnt track the number of cases of stomach illness, it estimated them, and then attributed most of them to food-borne illness–a few leaps of faith here.
The estimate has raised eyebrows within the food safety community, where one expert stated in a comment published by the CDC that the notion of 38.4 million unspecified food-borne illnesses probably overestimates the occurrence of illness caused by unspecified agents…
* Okay, you say, that still leaves nearly 10 million cases of food-borne illness (out of the original 48 million total). Not so simple. More than half of those illnesses are from something called norovirus. That is generally an upset stomach, but most often its spread by people, not by food. A food handler carrying norovirus who doesnt wash his or her hands can spread the disease. Similarly, one person with norovirus coughing or breathing onto another person can spread the disease.
So, when all is said and done, were left with 3.9 million illnesses from the known food-borne pathogens. Less than 10 per cent of the 48 million the CDC broadcasts, and which the media eagerly pick up on.
And remember, even this 3.9 million is still just an estimate. The number of reported cases of food-borne illness has varied between 21,000 and 27,000 over the last decade–a tiny fraction of the 3.9 million estimate, and an even tinier fraction of the 48 million estimate. Each of the highly publicized illnesses involving cantaloupe, peanut butter, eggs, beef, and so forth is included in the relatively small number of reported illnesses.
While the CDC estimate correctly assumes that the majority of food-borne illnesses–certainly very mild cases–arent reported to public health authorities, is the total really 3.9 million? No one knows, and that gets back to the original problem: If we dont know the dimensions of the problem, then whos to say the huge estimates are off? After all, this is the august CDC making the estimates.
And, indeed, many people use the estimates of illnesses-hospitalizations-deaths to further their favorite agendas. The food writers Estabrook and Laskawy used the estimate to argue that the FDA isnt resolving the food-borne illness epidemic. I used the estimates to argue that data on raw milk illnesses arent out of line in the scheme of things. The FDA itself used the same data as its main argument to convinced Congress to pass the Food Safety Modernization Act–theres a crisis and we need more money and more power to resolve it.
I can see why government policy makers would want to hold onto such data to justify ever larger budgets. But those of us in the media should be more responsible. Thats because the implications of the data are huge. We may be encouraging ever more resources to fight a problem that is bigger in the imagination than in real life, and in the process, failing to allocate resources to matters that deserve them–for example, like investigating further the dangers of genetically modified foods and of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, and the potential benefits of fermented foods and good bacteria…among many others.
All government bureaucracies, along with most system NGOs, fulfill this function in the corporatist system.
Estabrook himself writes something which cries out for a common sense interpretation: “the [Food Control Act] is supported by the food business…” Does anyone with a shred of sense think the Big Ag corporations would have supported anything which wasn’t designed to carry out the functions I described above? Or that they wouldn’t have crushed any initiative which they saw as detrimental to their interests (like the Right to Know initiative, or GMO labeling bills periodically introduced in Congress)?
That’s conclusive proof right there that the Food Control Act is intended to further Big Ag’s domination and crush the rising Community Food movement.
The fact is that Big Ag and Community Food are not two parts of an overall “food sector”. They’re two totally separate sectors, completely different in mindset, principles, intentions, practices, actions, goals, and implications.
One application of this is the fact that there is no naturally occuring “food safety crisis”, but there is an assault on public health being perpetrated by the corporate food system, in every way from outbreaks caused by corporate practices to the epidemics of allergies, autism, obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer, all caused by corporate “food”.
Reflecting this, and similar demarcations in every other sector, there’s also two completely different media: the corporate media, whose goal is to further corporate domination, and real citizen journalism, which seeks truth in reporting and advocacy.
Meanwhile, it takes a special kind of stupidity to think that if you give a thug more power, he’ll magically stop being a thug. Yet that’s exactly how stupid all the do-gooders who support the Food Control Act claim to be about the FDA, whose record is clear. They claim to believe if you give lifelong Monsanto thug Michael Taylor (Obama’s “food czar”, who’ll be head enforcer of this assault) MORE power, he’ll be magically transformed into a public interest advocate. It’s hard to believe anyone’s really that stupid. They’re obviously lying on behalf of Monsanto.
No one who understands anything about humanity, the environment, energy, economies and markets, or politics, could think an alien central government (including its corporations) could ever have anything worthwhile or constructive to do with food production and distribution, which naturally is overwhelmingly of a local/regional character.
Norovirus is making it’s yearly sweep across the Mid-Atlantic region now. Lots of people are going to attribute this self-limiting gastrointestinal illness to something they ate. Nothing could be further from the truth.
http://www.knowthelies.com/node/8459
Next week the board will here a presentation from my son Aaron on the content of the OPDC RAMP plan. For ethical reasons I will be stepping away from this process and allow Dr. Berge and the other board members to review the OPDC RAMP plan and vote on its acceptance for RAWMI LISTING.
Next week I travel to OR and WA state to visit three dairies that have applied for RAWMI LISTING.
Things are chugging along….solid RAWMI raw milk progress is being made as we pour our concrete foundations…all the while Rome burns on the pasteurized milk side of the world.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-milk-business-crisis-051600862.html
http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/are-fecal-transplants-the-answer-to-c-difficile-1.1075786
Dr. Christine Lee is an infectious disease specialist at St. Josephs Hospital in Hamilton and a professor at McMaster University, and is also is the lead researcher on the study. She said the healing power of fecal matter became apparent quickly, when her first few patients experienced a dramatic improvement in their health.
They were feeling better within 24 hours, Lee told CTV News. It really did surprise me how well it worked.
Ken
Bingo. The NM peanut butter contamination is a perfect example. TPTB knew for years of the non-compliance with the supposed rules for product safety, etc, yet did nothing to ensure the public knowledge of the failures. They are as guilty as the peanut butter company.
“three-fourths of its estimate) were caused by unknown agents. 38 million is an awful lot of unknowns.
The norovirus is spread like the common cold, as you stated David, person to person, also it lives for a time on objects (just as the cold virus does) and an infected person can shed the virus even after they feel better. I think it gets blamed as a “food poisoning” because people contaminate the foods they handle or are near. Have you ever watched people in the grocery? They sneeze, cough, talk and handle everything! How dare they! Germs are everywhere and re-enforces the need to keep your immune system up to par. Poisoning the germs only makes them stronger in the long run. Unless they isolate which contaminate it is, they can only guess if it’s norovirus or other bacteria.
GO RUSSIA…Putin has more guts, balls and brains that any US congressman or even our president and I voted for Obama.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358804578018472810435506.html?KEYWORDS=IAN+BERRY#articleTabs%3Darticle
Many thanks, John…in the waning minutes of 12-12-12.
None of us or any of my customers have reported getting ill, queasy, or sick–knock on wood I suppose. lol
Anyway, is there a way to have a good guess at how safe/unsafe milk is based on home consumption between the groups of drinkers? Or to offset the reported numbers that they seem to have set in stone? It seems to me that if you consume more of a product that is “unsafe” that you would run the risk of getting ill from it at a higher rate than if you avoided it. Just like if you eat out all the time, you are probably going to pick up some sort of bug more often than someone who eats at home the majority of the time.
I do believe the amount of raw milk drinkers is drastically under-represented as well.
Tracy
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323316804578165503947704328.html?mod=WSJ_business_whatsNews
A page popped up with a long list of possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones. I didnt expect that.
“spokesman for PepsiCo, noted that brominated vegetable oil had been deemed safe for consumption by federal regulators.”
“the European Union has long banned the substance from foods, requiring use of other ingredients. Japan recently moved to do the same.”
The side effects have long been known yet our govt looks out for the people…NOT. There is no reason to trust them, the govt is working for the big corps, et al.
One thing I take away from this article is how people are so addicted to these foods and they think in such fragmented terms… “oh, this has this particular ingredient (completely missing the whole DRINK is unnatural and unhealthful…” and rather than giving up the beverage, let’s “petition” the maker to make it “healthy” (which is something 90% of grocery store products could never be transformed into, because the whole basis of that system is laser scoped aimed in for ill-health, if not purposefully, unavoidably so.
People claim all the time how much they “want to be healthy,” but most really don’t, because it requires, you know, mundane tasks like cooking… and it is more important to watch people cook on TV than actually cook for oneself… and spending even a reasonable amount of money on food would cut into really important budget categories, like… the HDTV with sat. cable to watch the cooking show on…
Truly we are a very lost culture and nation…
At times, it appears that many don’t know what “healthy” really is. No noticeable pain? or reflux? No apparent illness? If you asked them to state specifically what “healthy” means, what answer do you think they’d have?
Many think arthritis/general aches & pains is a “natural” road to aging. And they assume that dementia is also a “natural” part of aging as is osteoporosis and a slew of other diseases. I beg to differ.
As to their thoughts on what “healthy” food is, they are completely different than my beliefs. I don’t think many know how to cook from scratch and learning to incorporate the time needed to cook from scratch and learning how to cook from scratch, is more than they are able to ingest in their already overwhelmed lives.
When I worked for the VA, the Psychologist and the social worker were eating “Healthy Choice” lunches. They were going on and on about the “calories” per meal. I picked up the box and started reading the ingredients, when I came to each chemical, I asked them what that was. They didn’t know, of course. Eventually, they told me to stop reading. I walked away saying, it doesn’t sound healthy to me.
People only know what they are taught, and change is difficult for most people, even knowing the change would be a good thing, it is still difficult to make. (I have a limited knowledge of scratch cooking, and am learning new ways often.)
In the last 50 yrs, look at what has been hammered into our society as to how they “should be living”. Kids grow up seeing the ads on TV, schools only teach so the kids pass a test so the school gets funds, doctors are taught to push pills, our health care is run by insurance companies, our foods are mass produced on contaminated/nutrient depleted soil-saturated in chemicals, etc. This is all they know. This is what they are taught is the norm. They know no different, and if they dare to step outside the box (more and more are slowly doing this) they are called freaks/belittled/ostracized and so on. People don’t like being shunned and will go to great lengths to “fit” in. Sadly they will suffer in the long run.
That’s an excellent synopsis of why attempts to “reform” corporations or central government bureaucracies are similarly in vain. Anyone who wants more public interest-minded behavior from such entities is fundamentally misunderstanding what corporations and corporatist bureaucracies are and what they’re designed to do. For example all the do-gooders who support the Food Control Act. At best they’re ignoramuses who understand nothing about the system.
In the same way a toxic beverage can’t be made “healthier”, but has to be shunned completely, so Monsanto, Dean, and the FDA can’t be made “nicer” and “more civic-spirited”. They have to be abolished completely.
But that’s the system we have starting in Jan. 2013. It has nothing to do with health and even less to do with care.
Insurance companies have been dictating how our health care is run for many years. This isn’t a new thing. I do agree, I don’t want Obamacare, it is not the answer and I think will only make healthcare worse than it already is. Doctors have been limiting how many Medicare patients they accept for 20-30 yrs, the increasing cuts to doctor payments will only make it worse. Hospitals have to accept Medicare/medicaid if they want any govt funding. I have Tricare, a military health insurance (It isn’t free for me as some think, I pay a deductable and co-pays, this was the supposed “free” healthcare my husband was promised when drafted), it pays the same as Medicaid and trying to find a doctor who accepts it can be very difficult.
I recall, about 20 yrs ago, walking up to the nurses station and over hearing one of the doctors arguing on the phone. I asked the charge nurse what was going on. She told me the insurance company’s policy is an appendectomy is a “same day surgery”, they didn’t care the patient was spiking temps (signs of possible infection). The doc eventually slammed the phone down and as he walked by the station, he told the charge nurse, the patient was staying and if the insurance company doesn’t cover it “send me the bill”. He was clearly pissed. The charge looked at me and said, he knows I have no control over that. I have no idea what happened about the bill. The patient did go home the next day, he did not have an infection. Staying over night was a precaution and I believe a needed one.
Many don’t argue with their insurance companies, they just do whatever they are told.
But now they’ll take me?? Yeah, if I pay a premium not to be believed and certainly not within the budget of the normal average american family. They can all just eat dirt. I’m not going to work 300 days a year to pay an insurance premium I don’t even want and likely won’t use. I have life insurance, that’s good enough for me and mine. That’ll get me to the crematorium when the time comes.
All parties have been evasive with what the costs are for each individual. I wonder what they do if you don’t work? How will they expect a person to pay for it?
http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-facts.php
One of the goals of Obamaromneycare is to force people who are trying to break free of the dollar-based economy back into it. (Of course “working” has nothing necessarily to do with being paid in money. Most who work get paid little or nothing, and all who extract a large amount of money do no work.) If the system can force you to pay taxes in the commanded currency, they can force your economic participation in their command economy. That’s the only “real” purpose of all taxation, which is never otherwise economically necessary. (A government can safely directly issue money, within the productive limits of the real economy.)
So this forced commodification, for example of subsistence farmers, is the main historical function of all poll taxes. The administration itself admitted in its court arguments that the health racket mandate is a poll tax. I wrote this post on what it’s intended to do to communities able to provide their own basic medical care.
http://attempter.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/the-stamp-mandate-time-banking-and-the-anti-colonial-movement/
The main purpose of Obomneycare isn’t to proivde better insurance (or even more nominal coverage), but to bail out the health insurance corporations, which were on the verge of collapse. It was just another big bailout program, this one to be directly paid for by the people.