Obama says Safety of Food Supply “fundamental responsibility of Government”
17th March 2009 by Alex Briggs
US President Barack Obama has named a new FDA head and deputy, as well as outlined budgetary plans that will place Food Safety at the top of the agenda.
In his weekly address Saturday, President Obama announced that he had put together a “Food Safety Working Group,” whose focus will include fostering communication between federal agencies in order to make sure food safety policies are being enforced, starting with “closing loopholes” that have up to now allowed coptaminated products to make their way into the food system. The goal, he said, is to ensure that the food we eat — including his daughter’s peanut butter sandwiches — are safe from contamination.
The president formed the Food Safety Working Group to “upgrade our food-safety laws for the 21st century.”
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.
Each year, about 76 million people in the United States are sickened by contaminated food, hundreds of thousands are hospitalized and about 5,000 die, public health experts estimate.