WASHINGTON -- After months of revelations about deadly contamination of produce, peanut butter and pet food, and with consumer confidence in what they're eating falling to an 18-year low, Washington is suddenly turning its attention to the problem of food safety.
Whether higher visibility will translate into major changes in the way the government protects the nation's food supply is less clear, however.
"There is a greater intensity and depth of interest than I've seen in 30 years," said Carol Tucker Foreman, who worked on food issues in the administration of President Jimmy Carter and as an industry consultant, and is now director of the Consumer Federation of America's Food Policy Institute.
Members of Congress are looking for ways to plug gaps in the nation's food safety system. Aides say leaders in both houses are scouring for more funding as a way of providing better regulation and additional protection.
"We don't need to wait until animals start dying or, God forbid, people," Rep. Randy Neugebauer, a Texas Republican, said yesterday during the second congressional hearing on food safety in as many weeks.
Congress is talking about revamping the food safety system after years of largely ignoring the warnings of its watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, which issued a report in February designating the area a high risk.
Bacterial outbreaks in bagged spinach, Taco Bell lettuce and Peter Pan peanut butter have heightened concerns about food safety. Fears intensified when cats and dogs died in March after eating tainted pet food. Investigators think Chinese producers contaminated pet food ingredients with industrial chemicals.
"I hope this incident will send something of a clarion call for better food inspections," said Rep. Bob Etheridge, a North Carolina Democrat.
An online Harris survey released this week by the Food Marketing Institute found that the percentage of shoppers who were confident about the safety of supermarket food had fallen to 66 percent, a decline of 16 percentage points since last year and the lowest since 1989. Because of such concerns, 38 percent said, they had stopped buying certain foods during the previous year.
China has reportedly begun cracking down, requiring food exporters to meet international standards and detaining managers from the two companies that shipped tainted and mislabeled wheat gluten to North American makers of pet food.
