Mindful of the public's unhappiness with the large number of food borne illness outbreaks in the last few years, President Obama announced
yesterday that he is revamping the nation's food safety plan.
Describing the government's failure to inspect 95 percent of food processing plants as "a hazard to the public health," President Obama promised Saturday to bolster and reorganize the nation's fractured food-safety system.
"In the end, food safety is something I take seriously, not just as your president, but as a parent," Mr. Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.
Mr. Obama announced the creation of a Food Safety Working Group, which will include the secretaries of health and agriculture, to advise him on which laws and regulations need to be changed, to foster coordination across federal agencies, and to ensure that laws are enforced.
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A bipartisan chorus of powerful lawmakers in Congress has promised to enact fundamental changes in the nation's food-protection system. On Saturday, Mr. Obama made clear that he not only supported that legislative effort but that he also might push to expand it.
A dozen federal agencies share responsibility for ensuring the safety of the nation's food supply, an oversight system that critics and government investigators have for years said needed major revisions.
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Thirty-five years ago, the F.D.A. did annual inspections of about half of the nation's food-processing facilities. Last year, the agency inspected just 7,000 of the nearly 150,000 domestic food facilities, and its oversight of foreign plants, which provide a growing share of the nation's food supply, was even spottier.
Public health experts say 76 million people in the U.S. alone get sick from contaminated food. Approximately 5,000 people die from preventable food borne illness. We say: it's about time this gets fixed.
