Apparently, the FDA is no longer functioning when it comes to food safety, but don’t worry, we now have a new “czar.”
The Bush administration appointed a new “food safety czar” yesterday and directed him to develop a plan for addressing shortcomings exposed by recent scares in the human food supply.
Dr. David W.K. Acheson, a former University of Maryland medical school professor who had been chief medical officer at the Food and Drug Administration’s food safety center, immediately stepped into the job.
The creation of the new position underscored the extent of public concern about the country’s food safety system over a dangerous chemical found in pet food entering the human food supply, in addition to recent outbreaks of bacterial contamination in bagged spinach, Taco Bell lettuce and Peter Pan peanut butter.
Now, I’m not an expert in this, but it doesn’t seem as if the problem up until now has been the lack of a “czar,” but rather, a flawed and ineffective FDA.
It’s almost as if the White House decided that food safety is poised to become the next big administration fiasco — Walter Reed seems to have slipped from the headlines, so the Bush gang is due a new policy scandal — so they came up with the “czar” idea to give the appearance of progress.
It reminds me of The Simpsons episode when Mayor Quimby establishes a “blue-ribbon commission” to address a crisis. One character responded earnestly, “Did he say a blue-ribbon commission?” Prompting another to say, “Well, you can’t do any better than that!” The Bush gang will do the same here: “Sure, there’s a food-safety problem, but look, I named a czar!”
And as long as we’re on the subject, what’s with all the “czars”? I’ve come up with a list….
* The White House wants a “war czar” to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
* Officials created a “czar” to manage relief efforts along the Gulf Coast after Katrina.
* There’s already a “drug czar.”
* On Labor Day 2003, Bush named a “manufacturing czar.”
* In 2001, after a cybersecurity controversy erupted, the White House announced a “privacy czar.”
* OMB created a “regulatory czar.”
And now there’s a “food safety czar.” Here’s a radical idea: why not use the existing federal bureaucracy, government agencies, and competent officials to do their jobs without creating some new “czar” position? Or is that pre-9/11 thinking?