Every person on earth relies on some other people for some portion of the food they consume. This is true for at least one item like salt used by every one. How safe are the food we eat or How good is the food supplied to you? The food grains are manufactured in some distant farms, processed in plants some where else, transported by some others, sold to you by a wholesaler like Sams club or retailer like WalMart or your corner store. Is your food cultivated, processed, transported, stored and sold to you in a healthy way so as to protect your interests? Can you rely on all these players to follow high ethical standards in each step of this process until you get to eat finally? All these years, we were hoping that they all are following these. If not, we assumed the FDA or Department of Agriculture would make sure that the culprits would be held responsible for this and keep us thinking as to how safe are the food we eat.
Recent developments in cases like those involved Peanut Corp of America and Chinese pet food items have highlighted the problems arising when even a single player in these long chain of events do not stick to food safety standards. And there are questions about the quality of poultry products exported from China. China has recently approached the World Trade Organization about this US attempts to ban Chinese poultry products. Even when Americans are trying to block the Chinese food items for lack of safety standards, there are no clear guidelines on American food standards. Food products manufactured in US are not totally clear of adulteration and similar problems. Nicholas D Kristof of New York Times has recently brought to light some of the problems associated with American Hog industry.
The recent investigations in to the cause of problems related to tainted peanuts which was the reason for the recall of a vast number of salmonella tainted products manufactured by Kellogg Co, King Nut Corp and Vitamin Cottage Natural Food Markets Inc have brought light to some astounding facts. Peanut Corp of America and AIB, the third party auditors who were in charge of auditing them, were conspiring together to gain perfect scores. Unlike these companies, Nestle conducted an auditing on its own and found out that the premises of Peanut Corp of America were not sanitary enough and hence refused to use their products.
Thus, we can see instances where the industry safeguards are working perfectly for the general public’s health and then there are instances where the companies and auditors are acting in tandem to circumvent the auditing process. Now we can ask for the formation of a governmental agency to do the auditing. But how can we be sure that they won’t act like the auditors and help the companies out? There are no easy solutions for this problem. Honesty of people who are in charge of the companies, auditors, government agencies etc only can prevent the risk of food born problems to our health.
