I landed in New Orleans and headed out to catch a cab. Semus, my cab driver, did an excellent job of getting me close to my hotel — and then got lost. I don’t blame him as there is some construction and there are so many one-way streets downtown. After a good laugh, I plugged in my destination, got directions on my iPhone, and we navigated our way to the front door of the hotel. Two heads are better than one.

Fast forward to my restaurant experience and the number of cooks in the kitchen. We all have heard that too many cooks in the kitchen creates confusion and general disarray. Extra people take up space and time, and it’s easy to get sidetracked from the goal of the kitchen: get the food out the door in a safe, timely, presentable, and acceptable manner for consumer satisfaction. Two heads are not better than one in this case.

What’s better? Two heads or one? It depends on the goal. Sometimes two heads can work together and solve issues in an efficient and timely way. Sometimes it bogs the process down.

When it comes to food safety and the poultry industry, do we need two food safety agencies or one? I’m hoping everyone was able to read the “Operational Evaluation of the FDA Human Foods Program” report and listen to the podcast hosted by the Federalist Society with former Undersecretary of Food Safety, Mindy Brashears, the former FDA Acting Commissioner, Stephen Ostroff, and former FDA Deputy Commissioner of Food Policy and Response, Frank Yiannis. It was a very interesting discussion.

Two podcast takeaways for me were 1) making the new food safety agency more risk based and 2) increasing the qualified best labor pool for this new agency (my next blog). At this moment in time, I do believe we have the safest food supply in the world, but I also do not believe our system is all scientifically risk based. Times have changed and our knowledge of bacteria and food borne illnesses have significantly changed. We know more, and it is time to change. We need to look at quantification and not just prevalence, we need to understand virulence factors, and we need to understand true product risk to the consumer.

In other words, I believe we need a mindset change at the agencies (FDA and USDA). For example, we should be able to share and use data from USDA, ARS, FDA, and industry to scientifically make public health decisions; we need to understand the various risk factors associated with human illnesses across all food products (lettuce versus cooked chicken); and we need to take politics out of food safety.

Honestly, I don’t believe this is currently possible. There is too much history and too many negative “feelings” and trust issues among agencies, across agencies, and with industry. If we are serious about change, then we need to get serious about a science and risk based strategy and we need to get serious about what is best for public health across the food industry. Food silos will never get us there, and 25 years from now we will be having the same discussions. As the podcast mentions, we need to “blow it up”, start over, and develop one food safety risk-based agency. It will not be easy and there will be significant change and growing pains, but sometimes it is easier than trying to patchwork what we currently have. What we currently have will not be our long-term food safety solution. In this situation, I believe one head is better than two.

Two heads are better than one, right?

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