Food Industry: Regulate Us Please!

(MoneyWatch)  No one's surprised when food safety groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest say the Food and Drug Administration is "woefully inadequate" when it comes to protecting our food supply. But when industry itself starts begging the government for more regulation, you know things are bad.

Last Friday, a coalition of ten major food industry groups sent a letter to Congress calling for new rules that would, among other things, establish safety standards for fruits and vegetables, require companies to create food safety plans, give the FDA greater recall powers and increase government inspection.

Pretty much everyone agrees that the FDA is underfunded and employees are overworked. The General Accountability Office this year once again listed food safety in its high-risk series, which identifies the areas of government most needing improvement. The latest report said the U.S. should "consider alternative structures for the oversight of food safety."

But why does the food industry want more regulation from the government? Usually companies lobby against regulations, arguing that self-regulation and the invisible hand of the market will solve any and all problems.

The huge food contamination scares in recent years have changed things. They ted to hurt everyone in the affected industries, including companies whose products are not contaminated. Yet at the company level, having good food safety controls is more expensive than not doing it, so how far is your average company willing to go? If standards are low or unenforced, even if a company wants to improve things, can it really afford to spend twice as much on food safety as its competitors and still hope to keep its prices at the market rate?

Let's see what some of the peanut butter producers say about their own safety controls.

Jif maker J.M. Smucker Co., Skippy manufacturer Unilever and ConAgra Foods Inc., which makes Peter Pan, all said they have stringent food safety and quality control standards. But neither Unilever or ConAgra responded to the AP's questions about how often the plants test their finished product for foodborne illnesses or other contamination. Smucker's said it couldn't answer those questions for proprietary reasons.

Proprietary reasons? It doesn't want to let its competitors know about its top secret but highly excellent food safety strategies? Better to let its competitors get caught up in contamination scandals and lawsuits? I somehow doubt that's the real reason the companies are reluctant to give details.

Then there's a more immediate reason for food companies to support government regulation, aside from the potential financial risk of future contamination scandals. Big buyers like Wal-Mart already impose their own safety standards. According to Tony Corbo, a food safety lobbyist for Food and Water Watch, food companies "might have as many as six or seven different auditors come in every month. Or [the buyers] require different testing to prove that the product is safe. It's costly to have six different sets of records."

Stronger government regulations, on the other hand, could set universal industry standards, eliminating these redundant costs.