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Food safety and the FDA: Where we are, where we’re going (maybe)
By Gina Spadafori
December 7, 2007
We jumped on Reuters last week for some pretty pathetic press-release-regurgitation-passing-as-reporting over the number of pets killed by tainted imported ingredients earlier this year. They deserved the ding, really they did, but in the credit-where-credit-is-due department, they deserve a kudo today for Missy Ryan’s article that conscisely looks at the problems with the food-safety system in the United State and with the Congressional efforts to fix it:
U.S. lawmakers have filed a flurry of proposals this year aiming to fix the country’s flawed food safety system, but champions of reform will have to wait for plans to become reality.
“The message is pretty consistent: we need more food inspection, we need more resources to do it, we need in some way to consolidate or create a more uniform and consistent approach,” said Joe Mendelson, legal director at the Center for Food Safety, an advocacy group.
“There’s a lot of consensus on the need to tackle these things, but not necessarily on the way to do it,” he said.
In recent months, lawmakers in the House of Representatives and Senate have put forward at least a dozen proposals that seek to head off a fresh spate of scares related to imported and U.S.-made food.
Consumers were horrified in recent months to see spinach and beef patties tainted with E. coli, peanut butter and pot pies marred with Salmonella, and pet food laced with melamine sicken or kill people and pets across the country.
Read the rest. (Thanks, Nadine.)
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Re the statement, “There’s a lot of consensus on the need to tackle these things, but not necessarily on the way to do it”:
This is a clear indication that there is either:
~ a lack of procedures,
~ discordance over current procedures,
~ redundant procedures, or
~ ambiguous procedures.
I’m betting all four problems exist. Now when you consider that there are multiple agencies doing the same jobs, you’ve really got a problem of exponential size. That’s why I think it’s time to clear the entire slate and streamline from the bottom up. [That means get rid of a lot of powers that be.]
Let me guess…..they’re going to ruminate on this stuff for the next ten years, add more band-aids instead of doing the open heart surgery, and then wonder why it still doesn’t work.
Actually I like the suggestion I saw last night - Nadine L’s??? To bring home the troops from Iraq and have them work in the FDA. Bet they will accomplish tons more using THEIR protocol than the FDA has been able to accomplish.
Comment by Lynn — December 7, 2007 @ 4:34 pm