appetites

A Half Dozen at La Cote Brasserie, New Orleans
You may have read recently that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced plans to ban the sale and consumption of raw oysters from the Gulf of Mexico from April to October because of the risk to consumers of infection by Vibrio vulnificus. Previously, the law required that purveyors of raw oysters post prominent messages which warn people who might be at risk from consuming raw shellfish to avoid them. The change in policy, apparently, stems from this speech, given by Michael R. Taylor, a senior advisor to the Commissioner of the FDA. Or, more accurately, the change in policy was first announced by Mr. Taylor.
I encourage you to read the speech linked above. I further encourage you to find, in that speech, some mention of the number of illnesses and deaths that result from consumption of raw oysters harvested from the Gulf. You will not. What you will find is that the levels of illness and death have not decreased substantially from 2001 to 2008. During that period, the goal was to reduce infection by 60%. Taylor notes that:

Even under the most optimistic analysis, only a 35% decline in rates was reported in these states during this time, but much of this is attributable to the State of California’s decision to ban the sale of all Gulf Coast Oysters harvested during the summer that are not processed post harvest.

So there was a 35% reduction, some percentage of which was due to the fact that Gulf oysters were unavailable in California starting in 2003. I have not been able to quickly find an answer to the question: “when were notice requirements first installed?” I suspect the answer is, sometime in the late 90′s or 2000. For the purpose of this post, let’s assume that we have, in fact, achieved the best result we can through labeling and notice requirements, and that the only way to further reduce the danger posed by oysters is to require post-harvest treatment.
But let’s back up a bit. this article from the Times Picayune contains the following statistic:

The vibrio vulnificus disease, the target of the FDA initiative, affects about 30 individuals per year nationwide who eat raw oysters from Gulf Coast. About half of those who get the disease, which invades the bloodstream and can cause a severe fever and skin lesions, eventually die.

Elsewhere, I have seen the total number of infections at around 40, but with about the same number of deaths per year: 15. However you look at it, that is a high rate of death per infection. Those who are at risk are people with challenged immune systems – people with AIDS, diabetes, or chronic liver disease for example.
Of the millions of raw oysters consumed each year, by everyone in the United States who consumes raw oysters, only 40 or so people develop an infection, and 15 of those people die. To say that is a small percentage is to state the obvious.
You may be wondering, “sure it’s a small number, but if we can reduce the number even further; maybe even reduce it to 0, why wouldn’t we?” To get an answer to that question, you should conduct a quick “risk/reward” analysis. What is the risk of leaving things the way they are? Answer: 15 deaths per year, assuming we cannot do more to alert those who are at risk to avoid consuming raw oysters. What is the reward? Answer: those of us who enjoy raw oysters can continue do to so. What is the downside to requiring post-harvest processing? The answer there is more complicated.
The oyster industry in the Gulf suggests that it would destroy their businesses, and lead to thousands of lost jobs. Even if you are skeptical about the numbers cited by the industry, a few things are clear. Although Mr. Taylor suggests in the speech linked above that the “capacity to process 100% of the harvest exists,” only 15% of Gulf oysters are currently processed by one of the acceptable methods. The industry suggests that the current capacity exists to treat only 10% of the total harvest, but assume that the true number is somewhere in between 100% and 10% Clearly increasing the processing to 100% is going to lead to an increase in the cost. Whether that increase costs thousands of jobs, or some lesser number, I believe it is safe to say there will be jobs lost.
Additionally, those of you who have tasted oysters that have been processed know that the flavor is changed, and not for the better. Thus another “cost” of requiring 100% post-harvest processing is that those of us who enjoy raw oysters will be deprived of that pleasure. It is unclear whether requiring post-harvest processing from April to October will mean that even oysters harvested from November to March will as a practical matter also have to be processed as a result of the cost. It is possible that if the regulations go into affect, no one will be able to consume raw oysters from the Gulf, regardless of the time of harvest.
Again, you may wonder whether incurring those “costs” are worth the chance to save 15 lives. The answer is: no. Before you judge me as some sort of selfish bastard*, please consider that this is a trade-off we make in the United States every single day.
Perhaps the most obvious example is that we allow the sale of alcohol. Alcohol is a poison, and it leads to thousands of deaths every year from cirrhosis and other diseases annually. It is the cause of thousands of deaths due to impaired drivers every year as well. You may have experience with the social toll caused by alcohol abuse, and while I have no numbers for that, I hope you’ll agree it’s significant? Yet we allow the sale and consumption of alcohol, with similar notices – that pregnant women should avoid excess consumption, for example – as for raw oysters. Why? Because as a society we have decided that the cost of allowing alcohol consumption is worth the reward. The reward being that people like to drink.
A similar case could be made for any number of products that are legal – tobacco for example – or for the way we allow certain products to be designed. Take automobiles. We could dramatically reduce the number of traffic fatalities every year by limiting the ability of vehicles to exceed a certain speed, or by requiring every vehicle to include far more “safe” designs. We don’t, for a number of reasons, one of which being that we like fast cars. When the federal government passed the 55 mile per hour speed limit a few decades ago, enough people bitched about it that it was eventually repealed. Not because it didn’t reduce traffic deaths (and save some gas), it did, but because as a society we chose to accept the increased number of deaths so that we could continue to drive faster on the interstate system.
These are the big ticket items. There are countless other examples of decisions we have made as a society to trade deaths against rewards as amorphous as “pleasure.” And this is a very good example as to why we do it. People have been consuming raw oysters harvested from the Gulf of Mexico for thousands of years. Archaeological evidence from oyster shell berms proves it. While it is true that a certain small percentage of our population is at greater risk from consuming raw oysters, the numbers simply do not justify depriving the population as a whole from enjoying the pleasure of a truly raw oyster. When you consider that the new regulations – which will apparently become law in 2011 – will certainly increase the cost of oysters generally, and likely have an economic impact on the oyster industry in states already reeling from the impact of Katrina and other hurricanes, the proposed regulations simply make no sense.
I understand that my position may seem callous. Some time back when I wrote about oysters, I received an email from a woman who had lost a loved one as a result of the Vibrio vulnificus infection. I do not mean to downplay the very real impact of the disease on her, or anyone else. But we make decisions as a society based on how they impact the population as a whole, and the proposed FDA regulations are simply not justified by the risk/reward analysis.

*I am