Food safety shell game: Peanut butter makes case for major reforms

IT'S ENOUGH to make you sick. In fact, it may already have.

So far, 550 cases of salmonella infection and eight deaths have been tied to products made with peanut butter from one Georgia plant, the Peanut Corp. of America. The stuff was used by about 100 companies in cookies, ice cream, crackers, snack bars and candy. More than 800 products have been pulled from store shelves so far and many people have given up eating peanut butter entirely.

The true number of those who have gotten sick is probably much, much higher. Experts estimate that only about 3 percent of salmonella cases are confirmed in laboratories, which would mean that more than 18,000 people might have gotten sick.

From what we know so far, it could have been avoided. Peanut Corp. received at least 12 positive tests for salmonella contamination over two years but hired its own lab to retest the product.

That lab - surprise! - found no such inconvenient evidence, so the product was shipped. The Food and Drug Administration, which supposedly has responsibility for oversight, hadn't inspected the plant since 2001. Even though there were indicators of trouble going back to last April, the federal agency didn't inspect it until recently.

A federal criminal investigation has been launched. Congressional hearings are planned. But we've known for years that our food-safety system is inadequate, based not on prevention but on investigating after people get sick. After all, in two years, we've seen not only this outbreak, but e. coli contamination of spinach and another salmonella outbreak from peanut butter in 2006.

In 1999, even before the anti-regulation Bush administration slashed the FDA budget and reduced its number of inspectors, a federal government report found that government responsibility for food safety - split between the Department of Agriculture (meat and poultry, 20 percent) and the FDA (everything else) - makes no sense. In addition, the FDA's resources are spread out to cover inspections of drugs and cosmetics as well.

With the current crisis affecting the sales of a wide swath of food producers, whether their products were contaminated or not, perhaps legislation proposed by U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., to establish a single government agency for food safety will finally get the support it deserves.

Every American who eats has a stake in getting this right. A trip to the vending machine shouldn't end in a trip to the emergency room.*