MUSINGS OF A CEO

Last November around 2pm the Food and Drug Administration issued a recall for romaine lettuce.  The leafy green had been identified as the culprit in an e coli outbreak that eventually sickened 62 people and hospitalized 25 nationwide, including two with kidney failure.  This followed a recall from earlier in the year that left 172 sick and killed one.  Millions of romaine heads ended up in dumpsters. The second recall banned the product during the height of the Thanksgiving season savaging the bottom lines of growers.

No one can dispute the FDA took decisive action to protect public health. People got sick, they quickly traced it to romaine consumption, then they shut down the industry. That decisiveness came at a cost to us since 15% of the packaging we manufacture contains romaine. Our sales for the quarter which had been tracking up 10% ended only 5% higher.

Having felt the sting of FDA action I am puzzled if not outraged by FDA inaction.  In recent weeks a mysterious disease has struck the lungs of vapers rendering them unable to breathe. As of September 30 it has claimed the lives of 15 people and sickened at least another 800 across 46 states according to the Center for Disease Control.  The CDC jumped in immediately trying to nail down a reason for the affliction but so far can’t. Neither can the FDA. They only have theories.  Some victims combined nicotine and marijuana. Others did not. It may be the chemicals used by the companies that make e-cigarettes. On September 25 the deputy director of the CDC Dr. Anne Schuchat admitted at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing “it is indeed possible the process itself is risky.”

Given the deadly and widespread outbreak have e-cigarettes been pulled from the shelves? No, you can still buy them wherever sold. Sure the federal government talks about banning flavored e-cigarettes though no one has connected them to the mysterious lung disease.  So unlike romaine when it sickened people, e-cigarettes, which have killed, haven’t been banned. If you want to risk lung disease, the Feds seem to think that’s okay.

I wonder why. Perhaps because unlike romaine no single culprit has been found. That makes it worse in many ways. If you don’t know the reason shouldn’t you act quickly to protect people? A ban would provoke huge outcry given the number of people who vape.  Combine that with Big Tobacco and regulators face serious clout. The Altria Group, owner of leading cigarette maker Philip Morris, controls 35% of Juul Labs, the largest producer of vaping devices. When Altria made its investment last December, it valued Juul at $15 billion. Perhaps such girth outweighs that of Big Romaine, which in truth doesn’t exist. Romaine producers are mainly family farms clustered in the Salinas Valley. Not quite the same political clout.

My point is this. All industries should be treated alike. If the FDA pulls romaine out of supermarkets because it makes people sick, then it ought to do the same when e-cigarettes sickens and kills people. Why they haven’t shouldn’t even be a question by the likes of me. Or else the next time a leafy green has an e coli problem, leave the stuff on the shelves and let consumers decide whether to buy it. That’s essentially what the FDA and CDC have done with vaping.  One path or the other. Shouldn’t be one industry gets treated differently than the other. Even if it is Big Tobacco with lots of vapers.