According to the article, a New York advertising executive wrote the slogan on September 12, 2001, before the Metro Transit Authority, a former client, even asked for a new phrase to respond to the to the World Trade Center attacks. The executive says of the slogan:
“I’m proud of what it’s done and the potential it has to do more. Some things you just can’t stop. But if it is stoppable, and that thought makes someone think twice and say something that stops something, that’s its reason for being.”
Which got us here at GAP thinking, what if this slogan was posted on the wall in workplaces around the world, instead of just in transportation systems?
What if society encouraged workers to blow the whistle on fraud, waste, and bureaucratic carelessness, as enthusiastically as it encouraged people to report a suspicious package?
According to the CDC, an estimated 76 million Americans endure foodborne illness every year. Of those 76 million people, up to 9,000 die. Simply for comparison’s sake, 2,669 Americans perished in the horrific September 11 attacks.
However, when GAP clients have seen wrongdoing and said something about dangerous handling of food product, they have faced retaliation and backlash, and even public disdain.
In 2002, whistleblower John Munsell sought GAP's help when the Department of Agriculture failed to act on evidence that ConAgra foods was shipping beef to his facility that was contaminated with E. coli. Instead of acting to protect public health, the Agency actually blamed Munsell for accepting the beef and suspended his meat grinding privileges. Instead of following up on Munsell’s evidence of wrongdoing by an industry giant, the USDA responded by harassing Munsell’s small meat packing company out of business.
Another GAP client, Kit Foshee, was Director of Quality Assurance/Food Safety at Beef Products Inc (BPI), a beef processor, when he disclosed that his employer falsely claimed its standard process of treating beef with ammonia removed dangerous pathogens from the product. BPI uses low-grade beef trimmings, which are notoriously high in pathogens like E. coli, salmonella, lysteria and staph.
Sound familiar at all? New York Times reporter Michael Moss recently won a Pulitzer Prize for his poignant reporting on contaminated beef and gaps in federal oversight of food safety. His article focused on a 22-year-old dance instructor who can no longer walk because of exposure to E. coli from a hamburger that included trimmings from BPI. GAP coordinated with Moss on the article.
However, Foshee didn't receive an award, or even a pat on the back for his disclosures, which have lead in part to the Department of Agriculture conducting a review of BPI and revoking its exemption from routine pathogen testing.
Instead, Foshee was fired.
GAP has worked with whistleblowers from other industries who have blown the whistle on life-threatening malfeasance as well.
GAP client Dr. David Graham, a 20-year veteran scientist at the Food and Drug Administration, blew the whistle after the FDA tried to suppress his study on the correlation between Vioxx and heart attack. In Senate testimony he identified the FDA’s handling of Vioxx as the worst public health disaster in its history, likely resulting in 30,000-55,000 deaths of Americans alone.
Because of Graham's courageous disclosures, Vioxx was withdrawn from the market and countless lives have been saved.
However, even after his Senate testimony, sympathetic colleagues and press contacts warned Graham that the FDA was finalizing plans to exile him from drug safety work, and supervisors told Graham that he could not present results from a new study detailing the effects of new pain medication. Following the intervention of Senator Charles Grassley in both cases, the FDA finally relented.
More recently, Graham and a colleague authored a report recommending that the diabetes drug Avandia be removed from the market. The report says that 500 heart attacks and 300 cases of heart failure could be avoided every month if every person taking Avandia was switched to another drug that doesn’t have the same negative effect on the heart. Despite that report and a Senate investigation that found GlaxoSmithKline should have warned consumers earlier of the drug's risks, Avandia has still not be removed by the FDA because of internal debate.
GAP clients like John Munsell, Kit Foshee and Dr. David Graham have been bravely seeing something and saying something for years.
Imagine how many lives could be saved if people listened to whistleblowers more often.
Wednesday, 12 May 2010