The Fundamental Fraud Undermining Food Safety
After reading Moss's article, one might conclude that what's needed to increase the safety of the food supply is more testing. But that response misses the bigger picture. As illuminating as Moss's article is, it completely ignores the fact that the meat and poultry inspection process underwent a radical transformation in the 90s that took away government meat and poultry inspectors' authority to ensure product safety and handed it over to the slaughter and processing companies themselves. Critics of this surrender of regulatory authority say it's the equivalent of expecting the driver of a speeding car to pull over and write themselves a ticket. It's hardly news that corporations exist to maximize profits, not ensure society's welfare. But if you have any doubts that the honor system adopted by the USDA isn't working, just ask Stephanie Smith.
So, how did one of the most regulated industries become deregulated? For this, we can thank vested interests for engineering a regulatory coup: mandating that Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point Plans (HACCP), pronounced ˜hassip', be applied to the raw food in/raw food out stages of food production.
Since the early 70s, HACCP had been used successfully and voluntarily as a food safety approach by industrial food processors. HACCP was originally designed to ensure product safety by including in the production process a "kill step that rendered harmless any pathogens present in the food product. But along the way, it was decided that the approach should be mandated to raw meat processing alone. The problem is: in raw food in/raw food out food processing, such as meat slaughter and processing, there are no effective, definitive control steps available, such as cooking, to kill pathogens.
As explained by microbiologist Dr. William H. Sperber in a paper tellingly entitled "HACCP Does Not Work from Farm to Table : "It is not an accident that HACCP evolved at the food processing step of the Farm to Table supply chain. It is at this step that effective controls, such as cooking, drying, acidification, or refining are available to eliminate significant hazards: "Safety is assured by process control, not by finished product testing. [2].
Why should we listen to Dr. Sperber? Well, for starters, he's neither a lawyer nor a lobbyist whose positions and actions are dictated by an allegiance to vested interests. And, most significantly, this scientist, who's currently Cargill's Ambassador of Food Safety, has dedicated his professional life to food safety issues and the appropriate use of HACCP by industry.
Sperber's career began when he was hired by Pillsbury's Howard Bauman, the microbiologist who originally conceived and developed HACCP as an antidote to the unreliable quality-control system previously used by the company. After an unfortunate incident that resulted in Pillsbury having to recall baby food, the company's president demanded that Bauman ensure no Pillsbury product would ever again tar the company's reputation.[3]
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