Food fight.

• Author: Mooney, Chris
• Position: SAFE FOOD: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism by Marion Nestle University of California Press

SAFE FOOD: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism by Marion Nestle University of California Press, $27.50

IN THE ILLUSTRIOUS HISTORY OF the American meat industry, few moments stand out quite like the day in 1999 when Rosemary Mucklow, director of the National Meat Association, suggested that tighter E. coli regulations were really a Clinton administration plot to make Americans forget about impeachment. This and other highlights of the food industry's hostility to safety regulation can be found in Marion Nestle's Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism, a book which, like Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, makes you think before you eat.

Nestle is chair of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University's Steinhardt School of Education and a leading rood safety expert who has sat on numerous government panels devoted to the subject. The first part of her book is chiefly concerned with the not always successful federal efforts to keep deadly bacteria out of the nation's food supply. The historic 1906 Meat Inspection Act, for example, required food inspectors to "poke and sniff" animals and carcasses to make sure they weren't infected--not a very good way to detect invisible pathogens. And though a scientific method of detecting foodborne bacteria arose out of NASA's 1959 attempt to provide astronauts safe food in outer space, thanks to industry lobbying, it took until 1994 for the government to extend these protections to the planet earth. "Food safety," Nestle concludes, "is as much a matter of politics as it is of science."

It's not exactly the most provocative thesis, but it's basically true. In most respects, the campaign to bring safety to food production is a classic Washington tale, with big corporations energetically lobbying Congress, generating pseudo-science, gaming the regulatory process, and subverting the public good to preserve profits. Not unreasonably, Nestle argues that what the United States needs is a centralized, European-style food safety agency to replace the current dysfunctional regulatory structure (which gives the Food and Drug Administration jurisdiction over cheese pizza and charges the Department of Agriculture with pizza that has meat toppings).

The book veers off course, though, when it turns to the subject of biotechnology. (Bioterrorism, the third focus of the book, gets short shrift.) In particular, Nestle worries about the almost complete lack of regulation of genetically modified (GM)...