toledoblade.com --

NEVER assume the government has your back. Witness the stimulus theatrics on Capitol Hill even as General Motors prepared to slash 10,000 salaried positions. The performers in Congress were more eager to revert to form as political opportunists than do whatever it takes to get the masses of newly unemployed or soon-to-be-jobless Americans back on their feet.

Sore-loser Republicans preferred to throw fits about excessive spending - after eight years of excessive spending. Giddy Democrats preferred to go on a shopping spree instead of limiting themselves to emergency-only expenditures. Doesn't give much hope to those of us in the peanut gallery worried about the government's ability to be an effective advocate for anything regarding the public welfare.

And speaking of the now peanut-free gallery, who is minding the store on the nation's food supply these days? The deadly salmonella outbreak linked to a peanut plant in Georgia has given every peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich-making mom reason to pause.

We know that peanut butter is a staple in many foods that kids inhale, from sandwiches to snacks. We also know how hard it is to be sure what peanut butter or peanut paste product is safe without regularly consulting the 1,800-plus list of peanut butter items recalled for suspected contamination.

Better yet, we'll just swear off all peanut butter products until the scare of the nationwide salmonella outbreak, traced to the Peanut Corporation of America, subsides. It's too bad that our wariness has already caused sales to plunge at least 20 percent at peanut butter makers not affected by the outbreak or even tied to the tainted peanut plant.

But with at least eight deaths and hundreds of people sickened in 43 states by peanut butter and related products contaminated in Georgia, what's a mother to do? How did this happen - again?

We assumed the government had protective measures in place to ensure that the food we put in our mouths is safe. We assumed that any holes in the government's safety net exposed through previous food scares from undercooked meat to compromised dairy, vegetable products, and fresh produce would have been repaired and reinforced by now.

But you know what happens when you assume. Past alarms about other products found unsafe for public consumption - homegrown or imported - didn't prompt more government scrutiny of the food industry with more inspections or stricter enforcement of rules covering production, shipment, and storage of foods.

Nope, all the earlier poisonings did was provoke widespread apprehension and calls for more diligent government oversight. But after the hand-wringing over how frayed the nation's food safety net had become, it was back to business as usual.

The inherent weaknesses in the food-safety system were duly acknowledged without any serious follow-up - sort of like the early inspections at the Georgia peanut plant. Politicians conceded funding was inadequate in the Food and Drug Administration to conduct necessary food industry inspections, but offered no substantial increase in funds to do the job properly.

And nothing close to the dramatic overhaul of the system urgently recommended after the public was endangered by food-borne bacteria ever occurred. Instead, the buck was passed from the federal government to the states. With no added spending to support growing inspection responsibilities, the FDA has increasingly relied on states to perform food-safety inspections. But states don't have the money for more inspectors, either.

So who's got your back in Ohio and Pennsylvania and places with the largest number of food-processing plants in the country? Try a handful of state field officials who are overburdened, undertrained, and less thorough than their federal counterparts. Lost your appetite yet? According to an Associated Press investigation, state investigators performed more than half the Food and Drug Administration's food inspections in 2007.

Meanwhile, as congressional subcommittees discuss ongoing food safety weaknesses, the whole food production system is becoming impossibly complex, more concentrated, more fragmented, and more in need of government oversight than ever. Consider how a huge agri-business can ship its product to a processor who then bags it under different labels and distributes it to every state in the union.

"Before, it was just bad produce coming from one farm," said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist with Consumers Union. Now it's bad peanut butter contaminated with salmonella coming from one company and going who-knows-where.

A Georgia health inspector who visited the Peanut Corp. of America plant in October apparently missed the roaches, mold, leaking roof, and other sanitation problems. After the initial outrage - children account for half of the salmonella illnesses traced to the Georgia plant - come the predictable pleas for reform.

But with lawmakers preoccupied with the politics of a shaky economy and ballooning federal deficit, never assume anyone's also monitoring the safety of the food you eat. So buyer beware and watch your own back.

Marilou Johanek is a Blade commentary writer.

Contact her at: mjohanek@theblade.com

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