Food Safety Bill and Public Health!

As I was catching up on headlines today I came across another example of public health: Food Safety and Prevention. There was a new bill passed by the Senate and finally the House that is waiting the signature of President Obama.

The bill focuses a lot on prevention and gives the federal government new powers to inspect processing plants, order recalls and impose stricter standards for imported foods. The bill would also requires larger farms and food manufacturers to prepare detailed food safety plans and tell the Food and Drug Administration how they are working to keep their food safe at different stages of production.

This story reminded me a lot of when I was an intern at Rock Island County Health Department and there was the suspected tomato Salmonella outbreak, which ended up being Jalapenos Peppers. There was a lot of investigation after the fact and not a lot of prevention before or steps put in place to catch the origin of the outbreak quickly. I hope this new food safety bill will implement better practices and learn from past experiences, because I am definitely a firm believer that history does repeat itself in some form or shape. Here are a couple highlights from the new bill, what do you think?:

• Allow the FDA to order a recall of tainted foods. Currently the agency can only negotiate with businesses to order voluntary recalls;
• Require the FDA to create new produce safety regulations for producers of the highest risk fruits and vegetables;
• Increase inspections of domestic and foreign food facilities, directing the most resources to those operations with the highest risk profiles. The riskiest domestic facilities would be inspected every three years;
• Require farms and processors to keep records to help the government trace recalled foods;
• Require grocery stores to proactively alert consumers about recalls.

However, the bill would not apply to meat, poultry or processed eggs, which are regulated by the Agriculture Department. Those foods have long been subject to much more rigorous inspections and oversight than FDA-regulated foods.

Ironically though, where I read this story and pulled the bullet list of highlights from the bill had the egg picture I have in the blog. The estimates from the CDC below were quoted at the end of the story and I thought they were a nice reminder of how serious this issue still is in the United States,

Ryan

New estimates released by the federal Centers for Disease Control this month say that about 48 million people – or about one in six Americans – are sickened, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die each year from foodborne illnesses.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/21/food-safety-bill_n_799963.html