I saw Food Inc. when it came out, and I have to say, I'd be glad to see dairy, livestock, and poultry inspections handled by the FDA, who seems to be much more responsible. At least to me.

Am I the only one worried that the FDA is turning into some sort of law enforcement agency?

So does this mean fewer foods laced with arsenic?

Damn, what am I supposed to feed my In-Laws?

@farcedude: I'll second that. Food Inc has definitely changed the way that I look at food.

@dohtem: I don't personally think so. I view these things (inspections, recalls, etc.) as falling within their job description anyway, so I don't understand why they hadn't been doing them. I want them to be able to stop bad food from going out, and to have the ability to recall bad food.

How does this affect Chinese food imports? I think my grandma would be upset if she couldn't get her dried mushrooms anymore...

@cmac: My girlfriend and I are actually going to buy a grass-fed lamb and a quarter of a grass-fed cow, and put it in the freezer. Yes, it's more "expensive", but as they said, the costs just aren't presented up front. Plus, we both grew up on a lot of wild game (moose, deer, elk), and almost can't stand how marbled (aka fatty) most meat is. And that's the USDA standard, too!

@dohtem: I disagree with that. There has been almost no enforcement of food in general in the past 50 years by either the FDA and USDA as the higher ups are usually a product of those same corporations that are producing these bad foods.

It can never hurt that an agency or organization is going to take an active part in safeguarding our food to make sure we're not eating horribly contaminated things. Hopefully, there will be more regulation by the FDA to come starting with livestock, poultry and dairy because that's where the real problems are.

@dohtem: They already were.

after reading about the corn/beef industry (such as by Michael Pollan), I get the idea that the root problem is not about catching the bacteria in meat, or in inspecting things more carefully (although that is a good thing to do).

I think I understand that the main problem is that unsafe (or less safe) meat comes from the way we've forced farms to produce it. It's not just a matter of catching it when it gets through -- it's that there is a basic problem with the way our meat is being produced now.

There is such pressure to produce so much meat (especially cheap meat) in this country that it all has to be done by huge factories and huge agribusiness, where in the name of profitability, the animals need to be on antibiotics, are packed into feeding lots where they wallow in their own $hit, and where the processing lines are so busy and efficient that when animals get through with contamination, they contaminate everything.

He suggests lowering subsidies for corn (and thereby beef), so that small farms can compete, which naturally produce cleaner meat. May not be the most efficient (or as cheap), but it will lower the number of e. Coli scares we have in this country.

I think of it as similar to the Japanese vs. American car manufacturing philosophy. In the 70s, American car manufacturers simply put a lot of effort into catching defects on cars that rolled off the assembly line, instead of fixing what was actually causing the defects early on. Of course, then, the cars were generally poor, because the parts inevitably barely met the standard. The Japanese model every time, sought to go back to the part that was defective and identify why it was so, and fix it.

FDA enforcement may be good in the car manufacturing way, but if we were to reduce the amount/desire for dirt-cheap meat, we might get less dirt-cheap meat and all that that means...

@pecan 3.14159265:

Food Dehydrator at Target/Walmart/KMart - $34.95

Bulk Mushrooms at Aldi - 99 Cents

Slicing the mushrooms - free

Having Granny around for another year because she didn't get poisoned by mushrooms gown in China - Priceless

@kepler11: Personally, I think the best way to reduce that desire is to show people what is involved in that method of production, and that their meat does not in fact come from that idyllic farm pictured on the label. I think Food Inc. is one of the best tools in that direction, as are Michael Pollan's books (The Omnivore's Dilemna and In Defense of Food). I was glad, once I'd read them and seen Food Inc., that I had grown up on mostly wild meat. Personally, as I said above, I'll be purchasing a lot of grass-fed meat, and will be filling my freezer with it. Heck, I can't stand marbled meat anyway.

@phate: Who buys arsenic-laced food anymore? I make my own arsenic-laced food at home, and it's 100x better than that store-bought junk.

I'm sure everyone wants safer food (myself included) however, not to be Debbie Downer, but how are we paying for this? I'm very left-leaning politically, but I worry about things like this. It seems to me that the conversation that has been lost in the Obama transition and TARP is a discussion of just what kind of government we want/need.

It's not simply a matter of, "I'm a conservative and government is too big," or, "I'm a liberal and we need more social programs." At some point we have to have a national debate about what programs are really needed and which ones aren't. Take the park service for example. No one will argue that the National Parks are not fantastic resources. The program was started by a republican, and gets untold scads of visitors each year. However, year after year it doesn't have enough funding to meet it's needs yet Congress expects it to do more and more, and the public seeks more parks, and more out of they're parks. If this is important, how important is it?

Maybe it's not the clearest example, but at some point these budget deficits will come due, most likely in my lifetime (I'm 31). A painful choice will have to be made, and it seems to me we need to start examining some of these programs sooner rather than later.

My $0.02.

Yay! Congress solved the problem, just liked they solved the problems with the economy.

@pecan 3.14159265: Check out the import alert on Chinese Mushrooms. You may rethink that food deydrator.

[www.accessdata.fda.gov]

I lived in China for some time and drank plenty of Nestle Chocolate Milk--loaded with melamine. No kidney failure...yet. When I saw that Domino's April Comedy, I laughed. Burgers and spit are common in fast-food places. Get better workers (pay the workers more) and the situation may change.

Well, we now have another government agency to protect our food supply. More jobs...for who?

@Coles_Law:
Yes, but do you grow your own organic arsenic?

@Nolarchy: We really should pay for this sort of thing via taxes on the affected industries (although that has its own problems).

I'd really like to see this country get a lot less allergic to taxes. People have no problem with paying ridiculous sums of protection money to the insurance cartels and bankers but they freak out at small amounts of taxation needed to build a better society. We've got to get over that.

@farcedude: I don't recall the last time there was an issue emanating from the dairy industry.

@johnva: I don't mind paying taxes except when I see it going towards a lot of bullshit.

@farcedude: I'm currently researching food safety systems and couldn't disagree with you more. The FDA is simply stretched too thin. It has a much broader jurisdiction and less funding than the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS). The new FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in June that the new registration fees were not nearly enough to fund the increased inspections, and that was when the draft bill imposed $1000 per facility fees. FDA should be moving towards USDA regarding food safety, not the other way around.

@pecan 3.14159265: The bill allows the FDA to certify private foreign inspectors that would ensure foreign firms comply with U.S. regulations that the FDA deems essential to food safety. Then again, the language of the bill also allows the FDA to do nothing new about imports.

What this bill really does is put a support framework in place to support the United States' Codex Alimentarius compliance (scheduled to be effective this December). Under the guise of food safety, we'll have guidelines that mandate insufficient nutrient levels and dangerously excessive allowable toxins.

@serenityjayne: Well, I certainly don't need any pesticides...

Houses?

Great but I'd prefer passing a Farm Bill that doesn't cause obesity, diabetes and death for people who can't afford anything other than Burger King and Soda.

I want health care, and I wish the Farm Bill was tied to it. We are what we eat and everyone should be able to afford good healthy food. Not just me.

@johnva: shhhhh let them have their fantasy.

@pecan 3.14159265:

It will be like the "Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr." (Registered Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture) thing.

@Snarkysnake: Not really worth it. She's old school.

@kepler11: I think that you hit the nail on the head with this one.

As a Vegetarian I find myself having conversations with people about the production of food quite often. I wish there were more people who understood where the meal on their table takes root. It's not just the meat industry, I feel like I have to say that because I am a vegetarian and people tend to think of us as a bunch of treehugging hippie quacks. The whole concept of commercial and factory farming is centered around convience for the consumer and disreguard for the integrity of farmlands and ecosystems.

This in turn leads to horrid conditions for our nation's livestock, by products of which are used to feed other livestock and fertilize our veg. It's a cycle that must be broken, not by attempting to sanitize a contaminated system.

So I say, know what's on your plate! Teach your children that food is not synthesized in the backs of grocery stores. All people should know the sweet taste of a tomato picked red from the vine... in your state... not from Honduras.

@HiPwr: That's only because they require it to be pastuerized. So while you don't necessarily get sick from the types of micro-organisms left floating about in your milk, they're still there (and there were plenty more before pasteurization). They didn't actually fix anything, they just found a loophole.

@TinkishDelight: Really? They didn't fix it? So people are getting sick and not knowing it or displaying and symptoms? Sounds like the kind of loophole I can live with.

@icezod: Which "other government agency to protect our food supply"? FDA has been doing this for awhile - they just have enhanced statutory authority to do different things now.

@HiPwr: I guess that's just a difference of opinion then. I'd like to have more care taken at the start to ensure that I'm receiving quality milk rather than a quick process to cover up unsanitary handling stuck on at the end.

@johnva: Taxation is theft. It's based on a policy that says that the government or society knows best what to do with the money I earned and worked for. It's akin to slavery - the state thinks it owns me and therefore gets a cut of my money automatically for the privilege of following their rules.

I'd really like to see this country get a lot more allergic to taxes.

Your example, specifically, does not work. Increasing taxes on the affected industries increases their cost of operation. That means they either have to increase prices to compensate or fire workers to reduce costs. Or, expect the Grocery Shrink Ray to come back out in full force, reducing how much product we get for the same price.

Inevitably this law will be paid for, like most government programs, by the people that use those goods. Jobs will be lost, prices will go up to compensate. As it's scope increases, taxpayers will be stuck with both the cost of the program and the increased price in goods that come with it.

It's a serious fallacy to believe that you can stick the producers with increased costs and not expect them to trickle through to consumers.

@HiPwr: Everyone feels like that some of the time. For example, I'm continually pissed off at the hundreds of billions of $ I see going to the DoD every year. The price of civilization is government, and the price of government is having to pay taxes for some things you don't agree with.

@TheFlamingoKing: Nonsense. Taxation is NOT theft; it's just paying your part for being a member of a functioning society. And yes, the idea is that the cost would be passed on in the price of the products. Duh? I think that the costs to society associated with an industry should be shouldered by, gasp, that industry and their customers. It's actually an anti-libertarian idea to say otherwise, because otherwise you're saying you're okay with industries imposing externalities on others. So I'm not engaging in any sort of "fallacy": I actually WANT the prices of the taxes to be passed down to consumers.

@johnva: I agree that taxation is not theft. However, it is extortion. You pay up, or we will throw you in prison. And the frustrating part is that we have very little control over the money that the government has forceably taken from us.

And yes, there are cases where we are required to give money to private entities like insurance companies. But, guess who is forcing us? The government again.

@kepler11: That IS a problem (and I agree with what you are saying), but it's not the only problem. One big issue is that things like salmonella used to be associated with meat - but where have the outbreaks come from in the past year or two? There have been few meat-related outbreaks. In this case, it's not about what we feed the cows, and it's not about getting tomatoes from Honduras. In a lot of these cases, it was HUMAN-infected.

I say this as a vegan, who is totally opposed to factory farming, and who despairs the fact that veggies seem to be constantly infected...

Increases frequency of inspections - but does it increase the manpower? Because if not, it's not going to happen.

The term 'farm' is limited to dairy, meat and poultry farms. So, if you sell anything else, that portion of the farm IS subject to inspection. And that $500 registration fee.

Farmers markets are exempt from traceability requirements but not other requirements - so, yes, it does regulate farmers markets.

@HiPwr: It's not "extortion"; it's just part of the imperfect social contract. The justification for using force to make people pay their taxes is NOT that we want to take their money; it's that in order to promote a fair society we've decided that everyone has to pay what our democratic systems deems their "fair share". Is the system perfect? Far, far from it. But what's the alternative? Something like Somalia? I'll pay the taxes, thanks.

Again, it's just the price we pay for having a functioning, civilized society. There IS a cost to that, such as the loss of some freedom. But the gains far outweigh the costs, in general. If you don't like how the system is responding to your concerns you can always leave and go somewhere else.

The FDA is concerned about food safety??
Isn't that the same agency that approves poisons (drugs) for unwitting victims? The one that allows (almost) limitless chemical farming? And endless processing of foodstuffs, until there's little or no nutrition available? Condemns food supplements but okays torture of cancer victims--cut, burn and poison-- for treatment?

@johnva: You can call being strong-armed into giving away a portion of the money that you earned whatever you like. It doesn't change the fact that it is taken at gunpoint.

I'll pay. I like roads to drive on and a military to defend our way of life and firemen to extinguish my kitchen fire.

All I ask is that the "powers-to-be" spend it wisely and they have fallen well short of my expectations. And until they can prove to me that they can spend MY MONEY prudently, I say no more new taxes.

@HiPwr: "Taken at gunpoint" is pretty close to qualifying as misleading vividness. I know that's standard libertarian anti-tax boilerplate, but that's not literally what happens in most cases. In reality, you'd be more likely to have your wages garnished or assets frozen than to be arrested, unless you were a really major tax cheat. And I'm not denying that there is coercion involved; I just think that's a necessary evil. There are too many selfish, greedy people who have no interest in actually paying any of their fair share for the things that protect us all like the military without some sort of enforcement to back it up. It'd be nice if we could run our government on charitable, voluntary contributions, but human nature is such that that is not possible.

And yes, we'd all love a better government than we have now, and one that would spend our money more responsibly. I'm with you there. But don't lose the perspective that despite its massive flaws we do benefit massively from the existence of our government. It sucks sometimes having to give up so much money to them, but if they didn't exist you wouldn't have anything to give up. I'm totally open to policy/spending disagreement, as that is politics and a legitimate debate in our society. I'm not open to the idea of people demonizing taxes, as that just strikes me as a little too self-serving.

@johnva: Ever lose a house because you couldn't pay the taxes? That's literal taxation at gunpoint, my friend.

I agree that taxation is a necessary burdon in a society, but I have no illusions about what it really is.

@HiPwr: You look up the word "necessary" because you always mis-spell it and then you mis-spell "burden". Get it together, buddy.

@HiPwr: I'm not denying that there isn't some element of coercion by force involved. I just think that the focus on taxes is self-serving too often.

In other words: if you think taxes are too high, go after government spending choices. You'll find a lot more people who agree with that (ESPECIALLY if you do so in a way that isn't so hypocritical as we've often seen from anti-tax politicians lately...that's why Ron Paul got a little more respect on that issue than say, George W. Bush). But complaining about the taxes being theft or taken by men with guns just strikes me and a lot of other people as kind of whiny and selfish, since we have to pay taxes too. The taxes aren't the issue; they're just the thing we have to put up with in exchange for our policy choices. The choice should be made at the time we decide to spend the money, rather than at the time it's time to pay for it.

@johnva: If I came across as complaining or whiny, that certainly wasn't my intention. I am just calling a spade a spade. I know that (most) of us are dealt the same card.

And yes, I agree that we need to address the policy choices made by those that pretend to represent our best interests first. Unfortunately, I don't think they are listening or feel accountable right now.

By holding the line and saying NO NEW TAXES, we can force them to examine how they are spending tax dollars now and (hopefully) make better decisions about how to do it in the future.