Food Companies Shirk Safety Responsibilities

by Natasha Chart · 2009-05-16 14:08:00 UTC
Topics:

Chicken pot pie; by inuyakiAs the global food supply increases in complexity and length, food companies are leaving food safety to their customers. Michael Moss in the New York Times describes ConAgra's solution to a salmonella outbreak caused by their pot pies, after their attempts to identify the contaminated ingredient(s) failed:

... So ConAgra — which sold more than 100 million pot pies last year under its popular Banquet label — decided to make the consumer responsible for the kill step. The “food safety” instructions and four-step diagram on the 69-cent pies offer this guidance: “Internal temperature needs to reach 165° F as measured by a food thermometer in several spots.”

Increasingly, the corporations that supply Americans with processed foods are unable to guarantee the safety of their ingredients. In this case, ConAgra could not pinpoint which of the more than 25 ingredients in its pies was carrying salmonella. ...

This is the food system that's supposed to be so much safer and more sanitary. Breathtaking.

(Photo credit: inuyaki on Flickr.)

Natasha Chart
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