Important Food Safety Legislation Debate Obscured By Media Obsession With "Beer Summit"

While the media machine obsessed over the absolutely trivial "beer summit" in President Obama's backyard between Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard Professor Henry Lewis ("Skip") Gates, Jr., the House of Representatives has, after days of dramatic wrestling, passed an important bill, HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.

Luckily, Obama Foodarama has been all over the story, calling it "the biggest change to the food safety landscape in fifty years."

In theory, the Bill will "modernize" our food safety system, by requiring more government inspections and oversight of food manufacturers, better monitoring of imported foods, and giving the FDA more authority to recall contaminated foods --currently, even Class 1 (you could die) Recalls are voluntary; the FDA has no authority to force producers get their contaminated products out of the food chain. The Bill will allow the FDA to impose civil and criminal penalties and to implement mandatory food quarantines, both for the first time. But before any of the new food safety initiatives can happen, the Senate must act on the same Bill. They're off to recess for five weeks, so...our food safety sitch remains just the same as it was yesterday...

It's terrific to actually have a food safety Bill passed, but if there's a recall this afternoon for, say, half a million pounds of ground beef due to E coli contamination (as there was just two weeks ago...) well, American eaters are still on their own. The Senate is concerned right now primarily with health care reform, and food safety still has adopted-child status. But the burdens to public health from foodborne disease can't be overlooked, either, which is an interesting disconnect on Capitol Hill. The Bill should be fast-tracked in the Senate, too.

So is it safe to eat again? Not yet.

Obama Foodarama also put the brewhaha event in context food-wise and politically:

 Any way you pour it, the Beer Lobby is, in general, thrilled as they have been for months, as president Obama has been photographed a couple times drinking beer in public--at a hometown DC basketball game, and more recently with MLB Commissioner Bud Selig. And all those questions about beer track vs. winetrack voters that arose during Campaign Season? They're clearly over. The President is positioning himself, right now, as a beertracker. It works swell for generating all kinds of political capital, particularly for health care reform.

(As far as the brands of beer consumed, Dane 101's own Jesse Russell nailed it before the fact, asserting that Sam Adams would be ideal for the occasion. Gates clearly heard Jesse's plea for something domestic and tasty, ruling out President Obama's choice of Budweiser Light on the latter grounds, and his original choices, Red Stripe or Beck's on the former, winding up with Sam Adams Light.)

So now it's time to contact our Senators, and remind them that food safety is too important to ignore.  They (at least the two from Wisconsin) are smart enough to work on at least several issues at once, even as a recess period beckons.  If you see your Senator back home this August, remind them that attention to food safety shouldn't be left entirely to the week or so after each contamination recall story.

- Barry Orton

Comments

[MSM sux!!!!!]

It looks like you're a part of the media machine too by obsessing about the beer choice in your parenthetical.