Safety of US food supply in doubt

Recently I posted in Bioterrorism made easy: the contaminated pet food wheat gluten was "food grade" my fear that melamine-contaminated ingredients might be found in food for human consumption, and that bioterrorists could get evil ideas about this. Could Bush's defanged FDA protect us?

In an article in today's USA Today, Human foods to be tested for melamine, the writer recapped the discovery of melamine in hog food and revealed that grain-based products used in human food will be inspected.

The threat is obvious: the FDA has to resort to testing after the fact. That is, if the stuff is found, it's because it's already in our food supply. Too late to keep it out. So what happens if someone puts something really bad in our food supply?

The article mentioned that melamine might be found in products such as:

baby formulas, breads, pasta, cereals, pizza doughs, protein shakes,energy bars and some vegetarian foods.

Yikes! What is there left to eat?

I'm not sure that this country's food supply can be adequately protected even with the best FDA oversight.

We buy most of our food from the KCC Saturday Farmers' Market. But still, the bread sold there, for example, is not made with ingredients sourced in Hawaii. Still, I think the melamine crisis is one more good reason to develop Hawaii's agriculture to the extent reasonable and possible, so that we will be less dependent on the foibles of imported products.

Try some North Shore Farms tomatoes or organic veggies from Ma`o Farm. Read The Free Range Gourmet. Eat local, stay healthy.