Keeping Our Foods Safe

“The exotic is everywhere,” wrote poet Amy Clampitt. One need only visit any big-city supermarket to know the truth of her words.

Kiwi fruit, once a strange and rare treat, is ubiquitous. Berries from Latin America, bell peppers from Holland, apples from Japan; American shoppers can now sample the world at their own kitchen table.

Some 30 billion tons of food are imported annually by the United States, including fresh produce, meat and fish. The great majority of this food is wholesome and welcome. But recent instances of illness caused by tainted fruits and meat have raised valid concerns about the safety of imported as well as domestic products.

President Clinton’s plans announced earlier this week to tighten standards are a sensible step. He has directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which monitors meat and poultry, and the Food and Drug Administration, which is responsible for the safety of all other food, including fruits and vegetables, to develop voluntary standards for growing, processing, shipping and selling fruits and vegetables.

Clinton will ask Congress to authorize the FDA to ban imports of fruits and vegetables that do not meet U.S. quality requirements. Finally, the president wants to add staff to the chronically undermanned FDA to permit wider inspection of foreign produce and also to develop programs in which farmers in other countries can get American advice on ways to improve their agricultural practices to meet U.S. requirements. This would include placing latrines a safe distance from vegetable fields and screening workers for hepatitis. This approach holds the promise of being far more effective than relying on random checks for tainted food at the ports and borders.

Consumer groups and regulators have been urging Clinton to take action on this issue since he took office, partly because of the sharp rise in produce imports in recent years. These imports have doubled since the 1980s. Thirty percent of the fruit and 10% of the vegetables sold in this country are now grown abroad.

Predictably, the president’s initiative drew fire. Some consumer groups insist that the standards don’t go far enough, while foreign producers regard the proposals as an unfair trade barrier.

Neither concern seems warranted. Even voluntary standards for domestic producers would be a major step forward given the gaping holes in the existing patchwork of U.S. food safety laws. And since foreign producers would not be held to higher standards than their American counterparts, the market for imported produce may continue to prosper rather than suffer. The biggest winners, of course, should be all of us around the table.