Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Is having a big bureaucracy the same thing as food safety?

Marion Nestle is professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University. She also holds appointments as Professor of Sociology at NYU and Visiting Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell. Apropos of the recent cookie dough recall, she writes:
What are we going to have to do to get a real food safety system in this country? By real food safety system, I mean one that requires production of all foods-- from farm to table--under science-based food safety plans (HACCP with pathogen reduction), overseen by a single federal agency that unites and rationalizes the current functions of USDA and FDA.
So "real food safety" requires putting all power in "a single federal agency" that "unites" and "rationalizes."    For liberals, the idea that a bureaucracy becomes more "rational," as opposed to, say, more political, when it becomes larger seems to be beyond question or doubt.

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