– OPINION –
Listeria contamination is causing meat and produce to be pulled from store shelves across the country, as hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise and new recalls occur. Now the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are investigating a new listeria outbreak. Some lawmakers point to the FDA’s apparent inability to protect consumers, and are renewing legislative pressure to create a new Federal Food Administration (FFA) to take over food safety.
The FDA is supposed to oversee 80 percent of the food supply, but focuses more on drugs and has a track record of glaciations and many failures in foodborne illness. We should have one central agency whose single, clear mission is to keep America’s food safe.
Senators Richard Blumenthal, Dick Durban and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro co-sponsored the initiative and recently reintroduced it. Federal Food Administration Act who would establish the FFA. They have criticized the FDA for repeatedly failing to prevent preventable illnesses and deaths from contaminated foods, ranging from bacteria-infected infant formula to lead-contaminated applesauce pouches. About 48 million contract foodborne illnesses every year, of which 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die, according to the CDC.
Even these startling figures are understated. They ignore a widespread and growing problem that receives little recognition and less action from the FDA: radioactive contamination of American food and water.
This was the subject of A Congressional briefing on July 15. It was pointed out that after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, experts, consumer protection activists and concerned citizens petition filed The FDA will monitor and establish a reasonable standard of protection for radioactive contamination in foods imported from Japan. The petition was filed in 2013 by the late Jim Turner, one of the original Nader Raiders and author of “The Chemical Feast.” on behalf of my group Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network and the FFAN Coalition. Nearly 1,600 responses have been received so far, including some from scientists with relevant expertise. A few weeks after the submission, the FDA sent out an letter saying it needed more time to respond, but that was 11 years ago, and the response still hasn’t come.
We were not the only ones to raise this issue in the aftermath of Fukushima. Congresswoman DeLauro also asked the FDA in her March 2011 report to test all food imported from Japan for radioactive contamination. letter to the FDA Commissioner. “The FDA has announced that the nuclear power plant crisis in Japan has not yet posed a risk to the U.S. food supply,” she wrote. “How can the agency make this decision with such certainty?”
The FDA’s actions and inactions still raise that question. It has lifted all import restrictions from Fukushima Prefecture and elsewhere in Japan, but on what basis? There is virtually no current information about how much or how often testing is done, which radionuclides are tested for or what the results are. The FDA has said that California bluefin tuna and other tested foods contained cesium from Fukushima, but that all “well within” the FDA’s “derived intervention levels.”What they didn’t say is that the FDA has one of the highest DILs in the world at 1,200 Becquerels per kilogram.
Standards limiting radiation in food in Japan are 12 times more protective for adults and 24 times more protective for children than U.S. standards. Food that is too radioactive to be sold to Japanese consumers may be sold to American consumers and served to American military personnel and their families. military bases abroad . FDA DILs for radioactivity in food are non-binding and unenforceable. It’s as if they’re set so high that when the next emergency arises—say, a new radiological release from the expanding nuclear industry—no legal action is necessary.
Last summer, the Tokyo Electric and Power Company (TEPCO) began dumping 1.3 million tons of radioactive wastewater from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean, a process that would continue for 40 years. FDA dismisses concerns about this, to reportthat the ocean “is enormous. . . and radioactive material in water from the Fukushima/Daiichi facility would be rapidly diluted to extremely low concentrations.”
But like Professor Bob Richmond of the University of Hawaii points out this dilution argument is misleading. “The ocean is not a sterile aquarium,” he said at the congressional conference. “Once these radionuclides enter the ocean, they are absorbed. . . throughout the food web, and they can be bioaccumulated and biomagnified in organisms.”
In other words, they build up and expand inside us and our children, where they can damage cells and organs for generations. The European Commission-supported research project ‘Chernobyl: Ecology and Health’ in Ukraine, which has been running for more than thirty years, shows that Chernobyl cesium-137 fallout accumulates in organs and has genetic mutation effects. And besides cesium, there are many more radionuclides that are of concern. Some remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years.
Today emerging cancer epidemicamong young people underlines the importance of taking radioactivity into account in what we consume. Pregnant women and babies are most at risk, but we are all affected. The FDA’s stonewalling, lack of transparency, and refusal to label food or communicate effectively exacerbates the problem, leaving consumers unaware and preventing us from making informed decisions about the food we buy.
That has to change. Congress has oversight of the FDA, but the FDA has proven resistant to previous congressional guidance on food safety. To address and mitigate the growing public health threat from radioactive contamination in food, Congress should pass the Federal Food Administration Act, establish the FFA to focus like a laser beam on food safety, and appoint independent scientists and experts who understand the consequences of radiation for the environment and health. to advise it. Until that happens, we’ll be (glowing) in the dark.
About the author: Kimberly Roberson is project director of the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN). She served on the board of the National Association of Nutrition Professionals and organized the FFAN Coalition, which petitioned the FDA for better food regulations after the Fukushima disaster.