David Theno

Seventy-six million. That’s how many Americans each year get sick from something they eat. Of the 76 million, 350,000 end up in the hospital and 5,000 end up dead.

Seventy-six million people. Roughly one fourth of the total U.S. population, it seems a rather high figure, particularly when we’ve figured out how to swap, replace, and reconstruct human organs. One would think figuring out how to make a safe hamburger would be a cinch.

But understanding why, in an age of spectacular ingenuity, eating remains so dangerous an activity, it is helpful to look at another number: 72. This is how many years have passed since the passage of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act, the piece of legislation that still governs much of the nation’s food-safety system.

To be sure, the FD&C Act has been amended many times over the years to meet needs Congress could not have foreseen in 1938. But there is now consensus that the bill is a fundamentally inadequate protection against modern safety hazards like E. coli, Salmonella, and other dangerous pathogens that can contaminate the food supply, causing widespread outbreaks and damaging the reputation of the foodservice industry, particularly restaurants. As David Plunkett, attorney with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says,

“We can’t continue to operate as if it’s 1938.”

The FD&C Act came in response to hazardous foodservice practices like “pouring coal tar and various other ingredients into products in order to make them look more attractive … to really fool the customer,” Plunkett says. It gave the FDA a “police power” to criminally prosecute companies engaging in such practices.

“That’s not the problem we’ve got today,” Plunkett says. “The contamination and the illness and the death is inadvertent. It’s not something that’s criminal.”

Hence the need for a new legislative framework to ensure food safety in the 21st century.Read more