The tabloids go crazy when Suri Cruise, daughter of TomKat, is caught back on the bottle. That's because American Moms get up-in-arms that this child is being put in "harm's way." Not weaning children from sucking on a baby bottle can supposedly lead to buck teeth, cavities, and developmental delays.
All that may be true enough. But the tabloids and the Moms they agitate might be missing the bigger picture: Is the milk in that bottle safe to drink? For some reason, the safety of beverages and food, especially for children, remains essentially invisible in America. For example, I don't read much about Moms' being torn apart about the questions surrounding the safety of raw milk.
And that could be because, as food-borne disease attorney Bill Marler points out on his blog:
"E-Coli, a frequent bacterium found in children's drinks and food, is something you cannot see, taste or smell. About 250,000 E-Coli 0157:H7 of them will fit on the head of a pin. Yet 10 or 50 of them will kill your child ... And summer is especially kind to the E-Coli bug. ... So far about 5.6 million pounds of E-Coli contaminated beef have been recalled, most supplied by Nebraska Beef Ltd., via the Kroger chain."
Children who survive E-Coli or another food-borne disease often wind up with damaged kidneys - and damaged psyches. Food-poisoning is a brutal type of sickness. Yet, why isn't there the analogue of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers [MADD]. Weekly, just like gossip columnist Dominick Dunne, I pick up my copies of the tabloids and I don't run across exposes on Nebraska Beef or see protesters outside Kroger.
Moreover, I don't hear a peep from presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain about making sure what children wind up putting in their mouths is safe - whether that's food, milk, or a toy imported from China. Is it true, as the article in FORTUNE by Marc Gunther claims, that government is increasingly less in the loop on consumer safety issues? Replacing it, documents Gunther, are the new watchdogs: Industry, plaintiff lawyers, and citizen activists.
Unfortunately, the new watchdogs aren't watching over beverages and food, not domestically produced, processed and retailed or imported. Perhaps these categories aren't as sexy as saving the planet. But at one time the hazard to children from lead paint wasn't sexy either.
Then somehow it got on the radar on government agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and HUD. That did the trick: Dealing with this epidemic of lead poisoning among children has been hailed as one of the major public success stories of our time. In Rhode Island, for instance, new cases are well below what even the CDC mandated for 2007.
The safety of what goes into the mouth of our children has to also become a national mission, right up there with lead paint, getting a man in space and preventing another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. It sure doesn't look like the new forces of influence FORTUNE discusses are going to embrace that. The default seems to have to be government. Some missions have to be handled from Washington D.C. - directly.
I envision a cabinet-level position. We can call its head The Food Safety Czar. Right now the best-qualified pro in that field seems to be Bill Marler of Marler Clark. Google his name and you'll see what I mean. Or you can read some of the testimony he delivered on Capitol Hill - Download TestimonyEnergy.doc Download testimonywaxmanfoodsafety.doc.
Disclosure: Two things. I almost died of food poisoning. Believe me, it's worse than any panic attack. And, two, for over two years I have been sometimes doing digital editing for Marler Clark.
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