Bacteria is taking over the food pyramid

In July of this year, Consumer Reports tested 142 samples of rice products and found detectable levels of arsenic, cadmium, and mercury in every single sample. Lead was detected in 66 of them. That kind of finding sits at the heart of a broader anxiety: a summer of overlapping food recalls—from iceberg lettuce and eggs to jalapeño peppers and baby formula—has left many Americans feeling like a trip to the grocery store requires a hazard assessment. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, joined It's Been a Minute to explain why the U.S. food safety system is failing and how we got here.

The Market Incentive to Sell Contaminated Food

Schlosser argues that the fundamental problem is a classic market failure. When you stand in a supermarket aisle looking at two packages of ground beef, you have no way of knowing which one might be contaminated with salmonella or E. coli and which is clean. "What that does is that benefits the companies who cheat," he says. Producing food without dangerous pathogens is more expensive, so companies that cut corners on safety gain a competitive advantage. In a rational system, the opposite would be true: companies that invest in safety would be rewarded, and those that sell contaminated food would be punished. But because consumers lack perfect information, the invisible hand doesn't work.