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Trump: Stop Regulating Poisoned Dog Food
| Daily Beast | - |
Trump
complained the 'FDA food police' dictates what's in dog food—but that
same FDA pulled 11 poisoned chow brands off the shelves in the last
year.
Reuters
Like a Dog
Trump: Stop Regulating Poisoned Dog Food
Trump
complained the ‘FDA food police’ dictates what’s in dog food—but that
same FDA pulled 11 poisoned chow brands off the shelves in the last
year.
09.15.16 3:45 PM ET
Donald Trump often suggests that dogs can be fired. But who could have guessed that he would come out against safe food for all those unemployed canines?
In an official fact sheet that was pulled offline on Thursday afternoon—but not before The Hill
reported its key points—the Trump campaign railed against the “FDA food
police,” complaining that the agency “dictate[s] how the federal
government expects farmers to produce fruits and vegetables and even
dictates the nutritional content of dog food.”
The FDA does indeed regulate pet food—but that’s for good reason. Eleven of the 23 pet food recalls by the FDA since September of last year pulled chow off shelves due to food poisoned by listeria and salmonella.
Dr. Douglas Powell, a former Kansas State University food safety professor who now publishes the popular Barfblog, says the FDA’s role is key.
“Just
like we regulate the nutritional content of vitamins that we add to
breakfast cereal or bread, dogs also need proper nutrition,” he told The
Daily Beast. “We should use science to improve the lives of not only
humans but our four-legged companions.”
Paring back dog food regulations wasn’t even the most outrageous suggestion in the now-deleted fact sheet. As The Hill
reported, the “FDA food police” was listed as one of many “specific
regulations to be eliminated” in Trump’s economic plan. The fact sheet
depicted “farm and food production hygiene,” food temperature regulations, and “inspection overkill” as cumbersome and costly safety measures that must be reviewed and potentially “scrapped.”
The
Trump campaign did not immediately respond to request for comment on
the “FDA Food Police” but, according to Dr. Powell, the use of the term
is “patently ridiculous.”
“Regulations
and the ‘food police’ are there to set minimal standards,” said Powell.
“The best companies will go above and beyond those minimal standards.”
So tinkering with what are already basic preventative measures against foodborne illness, Powell says, is simply a bad idea. The FDA has already investigated ten foodborne illness outbreaks so far this year and, according to CDC estimates,
every year 48 million Americans get sick from their food and 3,000 of
them die. The annual figure for foodborne illness-related
hospitalizations is a whopping 128,000.
Powell
predicts that if Trump were to pare back FDA regulations, most
providers would still be motivated to produce safe food under threat of
litigation but “you would see more people trying to cut corners.”
“Every
time we have an outbreak, once you delve into the details, what you
find is that it wasn’t some act of God,” Powell explained. “It was a
series of small mistakes, largely driven by economics, that add up and
lead to catastrophe down the road. And people die.”
In fact, Trump’s own restaurants have benefited from “inspection overkill.” In 2012, as the Associated Press reported,
the steakhouse in the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas received
51 violations “including month-old caviar and expired yogurt.” The hotel
reportedly “made [adjustments] immediately” and reopened shortly
thereafter.
And during an ungraded inspection
of the Trump Cafe and Grill October 2015, the New York City health
department found 45 violations. By the time the graded inspection came
around two months later, the restaurant had reduced the number of
violations to 12. Now, it serves delicious taco bowls.
Of
course, as Powell explains, it is not usually the FDA itself that goes
around looking for aging yogurt in Trump restaurants but rather local
food inspectors who largely adhere to the FDA food code.
“[FDA
food police] is a term that doesn’t mean anything but it resonates
with, I guess, the people who would vote for Trump,” Powell speculated.
“He’s just doing it as an anti-regulation thing. It’s not really about
food safety. It’s just an easy target.”
This isn’t the first time that the FDA has been the “easy target” of an anti-regulation message. In the early 1990s, in what the New York Times editorial board
would later call “an industry-financed scare campaign,” advertisements
helped convince Americans to restrict the FDA’s ability to regulate
vitamin and supplement labelling. The result was the 1994 Dietary
Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which set up a separate set
of standards for dietary supplements than for other food.
One
particularly memorable 1993 TV commercial in that “scare campaign,” as
Powell recalls, featured Mel Gibson’s house being raided for vitamins by
a SWAT team meant to represent the FDA.
“If you don’t want to lose your vitamins, make the FDA stop,” Gibson implores at the end of the ad.
But the Trump campaign may already be rethinking its own anti-FDA stance. As The Hill reported early Thursday evening, the anti-regulation fact sheet has already been replaced with one that doesn’t specifically target the FDA. Humans and dogs everywhere can rest a little easier tonight.
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