Mother Jones: Why isn’t the FDA stopping the epidemic of foodborne illness?

Last week, Mother Jones republished an investigative story on the FDA's profound failure to protect Americans from foodborne illnesses. The story originally appeared in OnEarth magazine, a publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group.

It's a strong story, citing example after example of the FDA's failures, bad behavior by food-handling companies, and procedures and regulations that seem to fall far short of what's needed to protect the public's health. 

That's all we would ordinarily expect an investigative story to do. In this case, however, I felt the story would have been helped by some reporting on the political context in which the FDA operates, and reporting on what might be one to improve the situation.

Pointing out, for example, that there is a revolving door between the FDA and industry, with personnel jumping back and forth from one to the other, is important, but it's been true for decades, and I'm not sure what can be done about it. I would have appreciated more on that from Barry Estabrook, who wrote the piece. And I'm not sure what can be done to make food safer–more inspections, and more competent and independent inspections would presumably help. But do we have any idea how much food would need to be inspected to reduce foodborne illnesses to a tolerable level? 

And regarding the political context: Government now operates in an atmosphere in which regulation has become a dirty word for many politicians, business leaders, and others. Regulation has its defenders, but they seem to mumble their defense while the critics sing out their accusations. In this atmosphere, could Congress do anything to toughen the agency, or could the FDA get away with expanding its regulatory powers to the maximum allowed by law? I don't know, but that would seem to be an important thing to include in a story such as Estabrook's.

I don't mean to be too harsh. As I said, it's a good story. But as is the case with some environmental pieces, it leaves me angry, dispirited, and with no place to go.

-Paul Raeburn