After all the back-and-forth in our recent — and, if I may say, extremely informative — Food Fight debate on S. 510, I hold to the same opinion I expressed at first: that S. 510 represents a small step in the right direction, so long as it doesn’t crush the alternative food systems that are emerging to challenge Big Food. A very small step in the right direction, I should emphasize.

Like so many debates in U.S. politics, the one currently raging around food safety strikes me as essentially tragic. It is impossible, it seems, to come up with a policy that zeroes in on the real systematic risk of the food system: the exponential expansion of hazard that comes from concentrating huge amounts of production in relatively small spaces.

Clearly, highly profitable industries like Big Food wield tremendous power in our political system. Just as no health-care reform could pass that didn’t respect the privileges of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, just as no climate policy could even be attempted without including massive giveaways to the very industries that cause climate change (see Ryan Lizza’s tragicomic post-mortem in The New Yorker), food safety reform is evidently hostage to Big Food.

The Grocery Manufacturers of America, a potent trade group whose members range from Monsanto and Cargill to Kraft and McDonald’s, supports S. 510.  That alone tells me that the bill at best promotes marginal, techno-based solutions to the food-safety problem, ones that don’t challenge the interests, or practices, of the food giants. As Food and Water Watch’s Elanor Starmer recently pointed out on Grist, the bill’s new inspection powers for the FDA are so weak that they would not even have prevented the notorious salmonella-tainted peanut butter scandal of 2009.

[UPDATE: A Monday USA Today article underlines this point. Food giants Cargill, Campbell’s Soup Co., and ConAgra all support the bill. USA Today reports:

 For ConAgra Foods, supporting the food-safety bill was a no-brainer. ConAgra recalled the Marie Callender’s brand Cheesy Chicken and Rice frozen meals in June after a handful of people affected by salmonella reported eating the product. The company spent about $300,000 on lobbying efforts this year. “If this bill was on the books, it wouldn’t have changed anything about the recall,” said ConAgra spokesman Jeff Mochal. “Our own standards are already higher.” [Emphasis mine.]