It’s time to clear 21st century ‘Jungle’ of food-borne dangers

One hundred and eight years ago, progressive muckraker Upton Sinclair shocked the senses of the nation with his stomach-churning novel, “The Jungle,” a brutal expose on appalling health and safety dangers reeking from the U.S. meat-packing industry.

In it, national outrage spewed from passages such as this: “There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms, and thousands of rats would race about on them. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats.”

From such shocking descriptions of meat processing in the early 20th century, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was born to provide taut federal safety rules and protections for America’s life line – its food chain.

One hundred and eight years later, however, the dangers of spoiled, tainted, rancid and improperly handled meat and other food products linger. No longer are the dangers found in the meat plants where the food originates but rather in improperly refrigerated trucks used to transport food safely to markets and restaurants.

Local restaurants

Just last week, The Vindicator reported that 21 restaurants in the Mahoning Valley had received shipments of perishable foods from a poorly refrigerated truck operated by the New Yung Wah Co. in McKees Rocks, Pa. Hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds of meat were trashed and covered in bleach to prevent the spread of food-borne germs and pathogens under the watchful eyes of Mahoning County Health Department sanitarians. Just last May, a truck from a Cleveland-based food distributor was stopped with an inoperable cooling unit after it had made numerous deliveries to Asian restaurants in our region.

Collectively, these and similar incidents in the state and nation renew fears about the purity and sanctity of our food supply.

Dr. Lydia Johnson, director of food and laboratory safety for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, promises a thorough investigation and follow-up of the inadequate cooling inside the New Yung truck that was stopped in Pennsylvania after it made its Valley deliveries.

Clearly, food distributors must be held strictly accountable for deficiencies and face hefty fines and possible jail time for them. Punishment for such life-endangering neglect must be met with more than a painless slap on the wrist.

So, too, should restaurateurs be accountable for checking the temperature and quality of all perishable food stuffs it receives. What’s more, state and federal agencies should form stronger bonds to facilitate more frequent food-truck inspections.

In Indiana, for example, a new law gives law-enforcement officers expanded police powers to confiscate trucks and loads that do not meet guidelines of the state’s health and agriculture departments. Indiana, sadly, is the exception.

Oversight lacking

Ohio is one of many states that lacks proper oversight of refrigerated semi-trucks. As a result, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Cleveland, is appealing for a stronger cooperative partnership among the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Transportation, and state transportation, health and law-enforcement agencies.

His appeal for such linkage has merit and should be welcomed by all agencies involved. The increasing number of rotted foodstuffs inside improperly temperature-regulated trucks makes one wonder just how many tainted shipments of meat, fish, produce and other perishable foodstuffs are actually making their way to restaurants and grocery stores and then onto the plates of unsuspecting consumers.

As long as such doubts linger and as long as safety precautions on food transport remain lax, Americans again will be left to wander through a frightful Upton Sinclair-like “Jungle” filled with potential perils from food-borne poisons.