U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson is stepping down. Perhaps that will help him calm down. In his swan song Friday, Thompson revealed a previously undisclosed propensity for paranoia.
Thompson said in a speech that he frets "every single night" about terrorists poisoning the U.S. food supply. Really, now!
Well, one possible reason might be that it never really occurred to them. Perhaps Thompson's helpful observation will change that.
A far more likely explanation is that terrorists have a little better grasp of the food supply than Thompson does. Someone might find a way to ship a poisoned food item to the United States. Terrorists might even succeed in contaminating a shipment of foodstuffs. You don't have to look abroad for such danger, however. Home-grown nut cases can - and sometimes have - poisoned food and other consumables. But Thompson's worries are hyperbolic. America's food supply is huge and incredibly diverse. What's more, while tainted food could make its way to your supermarket or restaurant undetected, even a few cases of illness or death would be swiftly detected and addressed. Indeed, tainted or potentially dangerous foods are pulled from the market all the time through voluntary and mandatory recalls. Local, state and federal health agencies actually are quite adept at identifying and correcting food-borne threats, which is why poisoned food isn't on anyone's list of weapons of mass destruction.
If you ask us, Thompson should worry less about terrorists and focus more on the far less sensational but far more common, home-grown food-borne illnesses like salmonella and hepatitis - endemic but preventable diseases that kill some 9,000 Americans each year. Let the Marines take care of the terrorists. The nation's next head of health would do well to concentrate more on e. coli bacteria.
Thompson may mean well, but when he babbles about terrorists targeting the food supply, we can't help but envision reams of new regulations, irrational trade restrictions and further bloat to the bureaucracy. Anything and everything the government might do to address Thompson's fantastic fears would drive up the cost of a bag of groceries without actually curbing the remote danger that keeps Thompson tossing and turning.
Perhaps leaving the Cabinet will allow Thompson to sleep more peacefully. Now that he's given us a better look at what goes on inside his head, we know we will.
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