Food Safety Jeopardized Unless Changes are Made
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On Friday, the New York Times reported that over the last three years, the safety of the U.S. food supply has not improved. Instead, some infections, such as salmonella, may be on the rise.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued the report stating that the nation's food safety system needs a complete overhaul. The CDC explained that the current system was created when most U.S. food was grown and prepared locally, but, since the industry has become increasingly global, the system needs to be modernized.
Dr. Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the agency’s [FDA] food center, agreed. “As supply chains get longer and longer,” Dr. Sundlof said, “there’s more opportunity to introduce contaminants that have a public health effect.”
The F.D.A. and the Department of Agriculture are supposed to share the burden of overseeing food safety. However, while the Department has been successful in its attempts to reduce salmonella contamination of meat and poultry, the F.D.A. has fallen short in its regulations of produce.
Approximately 76 million people experience foodborne illnesses each year in the U.S. Because these types of illnesses are relatively common, determining food safety is a critical, but overwhelming task.
The CDC uses FoodNet, as one of its three systems, to track food-related illness. FoodNet is the most reliable because of the number of surveys conducted and large data pool studied by government epidemiologists.
For information on food safety from the CDC, click here.