I’m in Washington D.C. today with some folks from Safe Tables Our Priority (STOP) and Make Our Food Safe. We’re here lobbying for – you guessed it – safer food. Most of us on the trip are either victims of serious food contamination or are here to represent a loved one whose life ended or was changed forever simply by eating –ironically something that we all do to survive.
First let me say that I am very fortunate that my mom, who became ill from spinach contaminated with E. Coli 0157:H7 three years ago, is still alive. Sadly, others here are not so lucky.
Back in 2006, mom lived by the notion that 80 is the new 60. She traveled, cooked, volunteered and as a gifted pianist, taught, accompanied and performed throughout her community in central Illinois. That all changed thanks to the Dole Company and its spinach supplier in California. After suffering kidney failure, dialysis and months of recovery in the hospital followed by a nursing home, she sold her cozy house and most of her belongings and moved into a senior community where medical care is on-hand 24/7.
Cut to the present day. There is a bill in a Senate committee that could drastically reduce outbreaks caused by food borne pathogens like E. Coli 0157:H7 and Salmonella, which currently sicken over 75 million people each year.
Food safety reform is long overdue – given that the systems that supposedly safeguard you from ingesting deadly bacteria were put in place back in 1906, partly as the result of public outcry from Upton Sinclair’s classic “The Jungle,” a shocking look at the heinous conditions in America’s turn-of-the-century stockyards and meat packing plants. Ouch!
I don’t know about you but that makes me sick.
If you ask me, the food biz — including how they pick, pluck, pack and process just about everything we eat — has changed dramatically in the last one hundred years. Especially since the advent of nifty stuff like tractors, fertilization, pesticides, corporate farming, Cellophane, microwave cooking, freeze-drying and vacuum packaging.
While we’re here, my fellow advocates and I are meeting with members of the Senate to encourage a swift enactment of bill S-510, introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois. Basically the bill as it exists today calls for more frequent inspections, stricter food testing procedures and the mandatory reporting of pathogens found in food samples. It also helps ensure the safety of imported foods and empowers the FDA to recall products deemed unsafe.
If you’d like to help ensure that the food you put in your body or serve to your kids and loved ones is safe to eat, contact your state senator. Tell him or her you have a beef with the status quo. Tell them you want a big fat juicy helping of food safety reform. And you want it now, before yet another tainted product hits the shelves and sends someone to the hospital. Or the morgue.
Bon appetit.
www.safetables.org www.makeourfoodsafe.org www.adlibmktg.com
