It’s been a bad year for industrialized food, from bagged spinach to Taco Bell.

Eric Schlosser, of Fast Food Nation fame, says in a NYT Op-Ed that no food can be 100 percent safe all of the time, but in a less industrialized food economy, local producers and butchers can only harm a few people within their reach. In our vast corporate food chain, odds are good that bugs and nasties will be spread far and wide, 5000 people die each year in the US because of something they ate.

The pro-business policies of George Bush have made the situation worse, politicizing our watchdog agencies.

Since 2000, the fast-food and meatpacking industries have given about four-fifths of their political donations to Republican candidates for national office. In return, these industries have effectively been given control of the agencies created to regulate them.

The current chief of staff at the Agriculture Department used to be the beef industry’s chief lobbyist. The person who headed the Food and Drug Administration until recently used to be an executive at the National Food Processors Association.

Food safety inspections have dropped to 3,400 a year, from 35,000 in the 70s. But even without Bush, the oversight structure is badly misaligned.

The F.D.A. is responsible for the safety of eggs still in their shells; the Agriculture Department is responsible once the shells are broken. If a packaged ham sandwich has two pieces of bread, the F.D.A. is in charge of inspecting it — one piece of bread, and Agriculture is in charge. A sandwich-making factory regulated by the Agriculture Department will be inspected every day, while one inspected by the F.D.A. is likely to be inspected every five years.

Neither agency has the power to recall contaminated food (with the exception of tainted infant formula) or to fine companies for food-safety lapses. And when the cause of an outbreak is unknown, it’s unclear which agency should lead the investigation.

Democrats, Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, have proposed a Safe Food act to combat our government bungling.

The bill has been in committee since 2004.