Personal Injury Law

Food Safety from the Jet Stream

By Bill Marler, Esq.

I am finally sitting on a plane (an hour and a half late) heading home from Atlanta to Seattle nearly two weeks after leaving Seattle to Los Angeles, then Los Angeles to Fayetteville, Arkansas, then Fayetteville to Shanghai, China and then to Savannah, Georgia. Tired is not quite the right word I feel that might adequately express the desire to not see the inside of an airport or an airplane - for at least a week or so.

Welcome to my world. It is quickly becoming a flash and blur of time zones, air miles and cultures, however, with the common denominators of bad food, poisoned people and platitudes by business and government of food safety – from 'farm to fork' or 'paddock to plate' – you get the drift. I move easily between food safety advocate to advocate for victims, as easily as I remember how I to pack for two weeks, but still never check a bag.

Food is big, very big business. I cannot even fathom the amount of business that is generated in the production of food in the world. It must be a very, very large number. We all eat - some better and safer that others, some more healthful, exotic, sustainable, and in varying amounts. However, we all eat. We eat for all kinds of reasons. We eat for comfort, because of boredom, to be sexy or because we are starving. But, eat we must.

Safe food is another matter. Let's stop for just a second and talk about what I mean about safe food. When I think of safe food, GMO's, pesticides, high fructose corn syrup, etc., are not what I am talking about – although, I know I should. When I think food safety it usually concerns feces and the bugs in it that can kill or maim in days, not decades. I know I should think about the other, long-term, food safety issues, but, when you are focused on animal shit in your salad or milk today, it is hard to think long-term.

So, where have I been and why do I do it? Los Angeles was the Washington State and Kansas State Food Safety HACCP Conference. My talk there, before I dashed to the airport, was an overview of products and companies that have been poisoning the public in the last year. It has become my annual report of feces in our food.

Fayetteville was two days with a bunch of smart LLM students in the Law School's Food and Ag Law program. Can you imagine talking feces in food for two days? The sad thing is that there is so much material, I could teach a class every day for years and still have more material.

In China, I found my voice. I told the several hundred attendees at the government-sponsored conference – from government officials from around the world to companies trying to get a piece of the food sale action in China (people in China are clearly un-American in their girth) – that 'it is a bad idea to poison your customers.' Arguably self evident, but after eighteen years representing the victims of the failures of 'farm to fork,' etc., many – too many – companies, simply do not get it. As I told them, whether you decide to not poison customers for business reasons (e.g., your customers my stop buying your feces-filled food), or for personal reasons (e.g., if in the US, you will not go to jail, or in China, you might get shot), or for moral reasons (e.g., the people you poison may will be someone's kid or grandparent). It really is a bad idea to poison people. My twenty-minute speech, and video with Chinese subtitles, left few dry eyes in a cross-cultural audience. However, on the same day a Chinese court, sentenced a father of a two year old to prison for seeking fairness in a system that allowed his child to be poisoned. Clearly, I have more work to do in China.

Savannah, Georgia was what I do on a micro level. How do you convince a multi-billion dollar a year company to fairly compensate a young mother of one who consumed a food product that has left her vulnerable to the need for a kidney transplant? After a very long day, both sides found agreement, albeit, painfully.

I am glad to be home – almost. And, Monday is just a day away.

Full post as published by Marler Blog on November 13, 2010 (boomark / email).