As if you needed more evidence that the Food and Drug Administration is, to put it kindly, run almost by accident, there’s this:
Starting in spring 2011, sales of fresh, live oysters from Texas, Louisiana and Florida will be prohibited from May to October unless they are processed after harvest, an FDA official told the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference last week.
According to FDA data, Vibrio vulnificus infections cause an average of 30 illnesses each year in the United States, from which 15 people die…Vibrio deaths usually occur among people with underlying chronic conditions such as AIDS, cancer, kidney disease, diabetes and alcohol abuse.
Get it? This is an emergency of such immense proportions that the ban on spring and summer oysters is being put in place in two years. And once it’s in place, it could result in the saving of up to 15 lives (12 of whom likely will go on to expire of other causes within weeks).
Yeah, sure, the entire city of Apalachicola, Fla. (which harvests some fine oysters by the way) and a couple hundred people associated with the Galveston Bay oyster industry will lose their jobs, but probably fewer than 15 of them will die of starvation.
Meanwhile (and here’s the fun part), E. coli, mostly the 0157:H7 variety, and much of the time coursing its way through improperly processed hamburger, hospitalizes at least 2,000 Americans each year, kills 60 of them and permanently maims others.
Yet government food inspection agencies aren’t threatening to ban the sale of hamburger until Cargill and the nation’s other giant meat-processors stop including floor sweepings and ammonia in their “Angus Beef Patties.”
So, guess who has the biggest bank account: the American beef lobby or the Apalachicola oyster fleet owners?
