The War on Food

Image by Marion Doss via Flickr

One of our Christmas gifts was a heightening of the terror alert level in anticipation of attacks during the busy travel season. While no Christmas attacks materialized (perhaps because of the crippling storms), we did have a new episode in the War on Food. 89 people in 15 states (and the District of Columbia) were victims of food borne salmonella. Fortunately, swift action was taken to deal with this problem.

While a food safety bill was recently passed, this most recent incident serves to underscore the need for even more reform in food safety. Now, if Al Qaeda had dropped the salmonella into the food supply, I suspect that the reaction from pundits and politicians would be rather interesting. However, it is an interesting fact that a failed attempt by an underwear bomber resulted in a multi-million dollar makeover of airport security while these sort of incidents generate relatively little change. Now, if government contractors stood to make millions protecting us from food based dangers and politicians could ride a wave pf food paranoia into office, then I would suspect much more would be done.