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In the last year, Claire Panosian Dunavan, MD, wrote two op-eds for 名媛直播 pertaining to dangerous foodborne disease outbreaks. As part of our review of the past year's biggest events, Panosian Dunavan revisited this topic to examine the recent rise in food recalls in the U.S. and to consider food safety in the next administration.

Whoa. What an epic political year. And what a gathering storm for healthcare. Are you already girding your loins for 2025's ongoing discourse and possible disruptive changes around vaccines, reproductive health, and the opioid crisis, not to mention new debates around fluoridated water? I certainly am. But what about food safety, another topic that sometimes flies under the radar but is now in the news thanks to this year's rash of recalls and outbreaks?

Consider a short-list of perps and vehicles. Listeria in . ferrying Salmonella. Toxin-bearing E. coli in and non-organic onions on McDonald's hamburgers, and, just last month, 80-plus tons of likely contaminated . On top of that, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has now launched nationwide testing of milk for avian flu. No wonder there's a new glut of articles with titles like "" and ""

I believe the concern is warranted. After a 3-year decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. saw a in 2024. In addition, well before September's closure of Boar's Head woefully-unsanitary plant in Jarratt, Virginia, the public seemed to agree. A yearly Gallup poll conducted in July 2024 found not just falling trust in local groceries but record-low confidence in our government's ability to ensure the safety of our national food supply.

Of course, it's hard to know how much John Q. Public truly understands about the modern food ecosystem and the many ways food can get sullied via filth and negligence along lengthening farm-to-fork chains. Or about society's growing consumption of processed food. Or, on the flip side, how new genomic tools are now detecting far more pathogens and outbreaks.

But enough about the current state of affairs. When considering the future of food safety, what sticks in my head is a famous, slightly-tweaked Hollywood line: Fasten your seat belts, folks, it could be a bumpy ride.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Because I love history, I can't help thinking about the pride many Americans take in today's food while forgetting our fractious past. For deeper insights, consider the opening response by Deborah Blum (a noted writer who won a Pulitzer Prize for her 2018 book The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century) in a 2024 .

"The U.S. was really slow to the food safety game. There were regulations in Europe and Canada before we actually took this up. There was just an incredible amount of 19th-century U.S. resistance to the idea of the federal government, as someone said, becoming the 'policeman' of your stomach. And so that whole American ethos of 'nobody tells me what to do,' individual rights, all of those things really played into it, as well as enormous industry resistance."

Sound familiar? Today, certain producers still resist regulation, while critics link pushback with an unfettered appetite for profit.

But, more importantly, recent decades have also seen wonderful collaborations between business and government meant to protect consumers. For example, the , signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2011, directed the FDA to work with industry partners along entire farm-to-fork chains to prevent foodborne fiascos, as opposed to simply responding once crises occur.

So, what should we expect from our next administration?

For one perspective, meet attorney Bill Marler, JD, a long-time food-safety warrior whose words and work prominently feature in the Emmy Award-winning documentary "." In with Restaurant Business magazine, Marler conceded that "nothing horrible...happened" during Donald Trump's first presidency, but neither did food safety improve.

Today, he's less sanguine.

"I'd love to be proven wrong...but [this time the people he's likely to pick] don't even believe in science...or what I would regard as standard morality." Instead, Marler suggested, they will be more like Trump himself. "And he's all about making money."

"I hate to be a Debbie Downer," he continued in a later conversation with me, "but I don't have a lot of faith anything good's going to happen. More likely the [food industry] lobbyists will show up with bags of cash and nothing will change for the better of society...only for whoever's got the bag of cash."

On the other hand, as I see it, Marler has two wish-list items that just might resonate with incoming leaders:

1. A single, more efficient agency that would replace the crazy patchwork of FDA and USDA bureaucracy, sub-agencies, and protocols.
2. Additional funding for pro-active inspections and retail product testing.

A combined agency might also allow the U.S. "to do the hard work on human nutrition," Marler added, which would not only assure safer food in the short run but would also promote longer, healthier lifespans.

Boar's Head Revisited

I've never been much for liverwurst, and these days I don't even frequent my local supermarket's deli counter. Why? My husband takes a fair amount of prednisone for a chronic lung disorder, and I'm hyper-vigilant about avoiding exposure to Listeria.

Maybe that's why my heart sank so low when I learned about the in the iconic brand's Virginia plant identified by USDA inspectors as an "imminent threat" starting 2 whole years before innocent people in 19 states began to sicken and die. I mean, how much worse can it get than "insects, mold, 'blood in puddles on the floor,' and a 'rancid smell in the cooler,'" along with "rusty equipment, peeling and flaking paint, loose caulk, holes in walls, product residue on surfaces and dripping condensation."

Why didn't someone jump on this sooner?

Of course I'm far from alone in thinking this. As Marler told me, "I'm hoping the USDA Office of Inspector General is asking really hard questions right now because there was clearly a disconnect between the person writing down the problems and doing something about it. That's just crazy."

In the meantime, to President-elect Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., or whoever else might be minding the food-safety shop in coming years, let me just say this: You have your work cut out for you. Like it or not, invisible, dangerous foodborne microbes have always lurked among us, perhaps now more than ever.

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