Food Integrity Campaign Launches Improved Mobile-Friendly Website

By Laurel Maloy, contributing writer, Food Online

Whistleblowers have a friend at the Government Accountability Project’s campaign to protect those who are in-the-know about the ongoing risks to the public’s food safety

Monitoring the safety of the food supply chain is an unimaginably humongous job. According to Food Integrity Campaign’s (FIC) director, Amanda Hitt, “It takes a community to build a culture of truth-telling.” She is talking about the Government Accountability Project (GAP) and FIC’s campaign to empower food supply chain personnel to report fraud, abuse, and blatant disrespect for food safety regulations.

FIC’s website has a new animated video supporting “a community of whistleblowers, truth-tellers, and advocates to safeguard our food.” Their areas of interest encompass everything to do with food safety, such as transparency and contamination, but also include food animal welfare, the environment, and worker’s rights. The current active campaigns involve:

• Fighting against state laws that criminalize those who blow the whistle on questionable or unlawful food safety violations
• Supporting workers who fall ill as the result of chemical hazards in meat and poultry processing plants
• Transparency about the inappropriate use of antibiotics in animal food production and the dangers to the public

In addition to the numerous resources available on the website, the new and improved site is mobile-friendly, making it easily accessible by smartphone or tablet. This change can be expected to increase traffic to FIC’s site. It will also make it easier for concerned and conscientious food workers to report behavior they believe to be injurious to the public’s health.

GAP is a non-profit organization with its headquarters in Washington, D.C. Operating for more than three decades, some of the most highly-publicized cases with GAP involvement have resulted in much needed change. One such example is during the 1980s when GAP helped whistleblowers bring to light the mass contamination occurring at poultry processing plants. In 1990, GAP was instrumental in the “Food Lion wars,” exposing unconscionable and dangerous corporate practices. The FIC was established after a GAP conference at the American University Washington College of Law. The conference ascertained a growing need for reform within the agriculture industry, leading to the formation of the FIC.

The FIC has enabled GAP to broaden its legislative agenda to include local and state regulation, as well as federal legislation.  Today’s FIC protects those who wish to expose the truths behind the scenes of the food supply chain at all levels. The FIC fights for laws to protect whistleblowers from job loss, reputational slander, and tactics used to silence the messenger. Free and reduced-cost legal services provide a truth-teller with the means to have a voice. The FIC’s resources are used to amplify the voice of whistleblowers through media outlet contacts and through the legislative system. Finally, FIC seeks to educate those not aware of their rights and the resources available when food supply chain safety and integrity is at risk. Sweeping changes are occurring now. As FSMA is fully implemented over the next few years, now is not the time for silence or inaction. If it is to be successful, all must do their part.

Mark Twain said, “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” What he didn’t say is that it will thoroughly tick some people off. However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all be doing what we know to be right. If everyone did the “right thing,” there would be no need for whistleblowers. If there were no whistleblowers, there would be no need for such organizations as the GAP and the FIC.

In the real world, though, there is a culture of lying, half-truths, secretiveness, and abuse in the fight to remain ever more profitable in the food industry. There is also, however, a vast resource of food supply workers who have access to resources and protection through such organizations as the FIC. It may behoove all in the industry that have an opportunity for positive change now, to embrace those changes and do the right thing.