Americans Are 110 Times More Likely to Die from Contaminated Food Than Terrorism

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/media/americans-are-110-times-more-likely-die-contaminated-food-terrorism



One of the most important revelations from the international drama over Edward Snowden's NSA leaks in May is the exposure of a nearly lunatic disproportion in threat assessment and spending by the US government. This disproportion has been spawned by a fear-based politics of terror that mandates unlimited money and media attention for even the most tendentious terrorism threats, while lethal domestic risks such as contaminated food from our industrialized agribusiness system are all but ignored. A comparison of federal spending on food safety intelligence versus antiterrorism intelligence brings th e irrationality of the threat assessment process into stark relief.

In 2011, the year of Osama bin Laden's death, the State Department reported that 17 Americans were killed in all terrorist incidents worldwide. The same year, a single outbreak of listeriosis from tainted cantaloupe killed 33 people in the United States. Foodborne pathogens also sickened 48.7 million, hospitalized 127,839 and caused a total of 3,037 deaths. This is a typical year, not an aberration.

We have more to fear from contaminated cantaloupe than from al-Qaeda, yet the United States spends $75 billion per year spread across 15 intelligence agencies in a scattershot attempt to prevent terrorism, illegally spying on its own citizens in the process. By comparison, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is struggling to secure $1.1 billion in the 2014 federal budget for its food inspection program, while tougher food processing and inspection regulations passed in 2011 are held up by agribusiness lobbying in Congress. The situation is so dire that Jensen Farms, the company that produced the toxic cantaloupe that killed 33 people in 2011, had never been inspected by the FDA.

In the past 10 years, outbreaks of foodborne illness have affected all 50 states, with hundreds of food recalls annually involving many of America's leading brands, including Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Taylor Farms Organics, Ralph's, Kroger, Food 4 Less, Costco, Dole, Kellogg's and dozens of others. There have been multi-state recalls of contaminated cheese, organic spinach, salad greens, lettuce, milk, ground beef, eggs, organic brown rice, peanut butter, mangoes, cantaloupe and hundreds of other popular foods.

[Democracyinkind]

1. A question of priorities

FDA budget 2013: $4,486,368,000

"Defense" budget 2013: $526,000,000,000 (Reuters cited that in April, other numbers go up to 800+Billion)

Not that funding the FDA adequatly would change anything, as they are mostly in the hands of those they should protect us from. But it does starkly illustrate "our" national priorities.

[Surya Gayatri]

2. Glaring proof of America's priorities--to hell with food inspectors...bring on "Homeland Security"..

[georgew]

3. but inspecting food costs money, and killin' terrorists creates jobs.

that's the price you pay for doing business in an unfettered unchecked unregulated capitalist society.

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[Sunlei]

4. yes, just washing/bleach? the 'crap' off the factory farm foods will always be an issue.

how about we start raising our food animals, eggs and crops in clean conditions?

[marmar]

5. k/r

[Scuba]

6. Yet we spend most of our budget on defense and are privatizing FDA inspections? Keerist.

[MisterP]

7. and that's with the US Jason Biggsing a majority of Mideastern countries AND the FBI giving

a few radicals explosives and more radicalization in order to arrest them

[bluedeathray]

8. So let's cut FDA funding!

Sequestration you know...

And besides, the MIC needs some jack. Know what I'm sayin' ?

[indepat]

9. Spending 70 times as much to keep us safe from terra as spending to keep our food supply safe

is but a microcosm of our government's collective judgment.