On January 4th, 2011, President Barack Obama signed into law the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). For the first time since 1938, new regulations were added to the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and how they regulate the way food is grown, harvested, and processed. According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, “each year roughly one out of six Americans (or 48 million people) gets sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from food borne diseases” (Strauss, 358). With new authorities given to the FDA including mandatory recall, the goal of the FSMA is to help better public health by strengthening the food safety system.
Several contamination’s and large-scale outbreaks over the last decade have made ensuring food quality a major challenge. Outbreaks of Salmonella enterica, Escherichia coli, and many other food boune related pathogens have raised questions about the quality of food. With the FSMA, preventative control strategies have been implemented including Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) procedures. As Rubera and Knutson state, “The HACCP plan must include identifying: (1) reasonable foreseeable hazards, including those that may be introduced as a result of terrorism; (2) preventive controls and control points to minimize, prevent, or control hazards; (3) means of monitoring the effectiveness of preventive controls; (4) corrective actions to be taken if controls are found to be ineffective; (5) means of monitoring and verifying the adequacy of controls, including maintaining two-years of monitoring and verification records; and (6) provisions for reanalyzing the HACCP plan every three years” (Knutson and Ribera, 17). By incorporating more demanding food identification procedures, ...
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...es are difficult to insure adequate food quality because they operate outdoors and are susceptible to food borne pathogens. Lastly, the FSMA drastically effects the economy by pushing a $1.4 billion plan over five years. This plan may push the FDA into passing legislation at all stages of government and even private sector in order to meet the cost of the plan. Though the plan has its good and bad, American's must remember that this is the first bill that has passed since 1938 that has impacted food quality and the powers of the FDA. Though expensive, the FSMA is a step in the right direction. It may almost be impossible to guarantee food quality within the United States, but this law is taking baby steps at attacking a serious issue. The FSMA is striving to improve the food safety system within the U.S and only time will tell how successful the law turns out to be.
The act of manufactures labeling of our foods products in terms of the ingredients a particular product contains and the nutritious facts is sometimes taken for granted, we often see the labels on our food products, but ignore them because we’re so used to seeing them in our daily lives. Surprisingly, food product labeling, specifically that pertaining to allergen warnings, were not always available to consumers until a government mandate in 2004 (FALCPA). I think part of the reason for such a lateness in regulation was due to a social stigma regarding allergies, that having them was some sort of natural selection and not an issue that should be taken care of. Another surprising notion I came across was that although there was no government regulation, manufactures of food products took a good amount of initiative in letting their consumers know of potential allergens in their products.
The momentum generated by the passage of the Meat Inspection Act helped secure the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act, which had been stalled in Congress since 1905. With these two pieces of legislation, the federal government took important steps to assure the public that the food they were eating met minimu...
According to the 2002 Harris poll, seven out of ten adults in the United States take vitamins, minerals, herbs, or other supplements (Schardt 2). Due to media advertising, dietary supplements are becoming more popular. Companies compete to have the best supplements. It is said that forty percent of American adults take vitamin supplements and over the counter products, which total in several billion dollars (Farley 2). Although many of the supplements claim to be healthy and help lose weight, the dangers are endless. Dietary supplements can be illegally spiked and are not safe. Therefore, putting regulations on dietary supplements and their safety hazards is necessary.
The FDA stands for The Food and Drug Administration. The FDA is an agency of the
Meatpacking has become the most dangerous job in America. Unlike poultry plants, in which almost all tasks are performed by machines, most of the work in a slaughterhouse is done by hand. Hazards of the job include injuries from the various machines and knives, strain to the body from poor working conditions, and even methamphetamine use in order to keep up with the production line. Women face the added threat of sexual harassment. This chapter opens with an anecdote about the largest recall of food in the nation’s history. In 1997 approximately 35 million pounds of ground beef was recalled by Hudson Foods because a strain of E Coli was found in the food. However, by the time the beef was recalled, 25 million pounds had already been eaten. Schlosser notes that the nature of food poisoning is changing. Prior to the rise of large meatpacking plants, people would become ill from bad food in small, localized arenas. Now, because meat is distributed all over the nation, an outbreak of food poisoning in one town may indicate nation-wide epidemic. Every day in the United States, 200, 000 people are sickened by a food borne
To give background on the FDA and USDA for better understanding the USDA is responsible for meat and poultry, while the FDA is responsible for dairy, seafood, and vegetables. The USDA was founded in 1862 to encourage food creation in the United States (Sherrow 15). Dr. Peter Collier was the first person to suggest rules and laws for the safety of our food (Sherrow 15). Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act in 1890. The Act made the USDA inspectors inspect all pig products (Sherrow 15). In 1906 the Comprehensive Meat Inspection Act was passed. The act assigned inspectors from the UDSA to the United States’ 163 slaughter houses. In the slaughter houses the meat needed to be inspected before and after slaughter (Sherrow 15-16). The FDA is also responsible for protecting food from terrorists and anyone who wants to try to harm the public (Wilson). The FDA oversees 167,000 farms in the United States and 421,000 worldwide farms. The FDA only has 1,100 inspectors to inspect those farms (Wilson). The number of inspections done by the FDA went from 4,573 in 2005 to 3,400 in 2006 (Sherrow 34). According to the Center of Science in the Public Interest the FDA has no authority for prev...
Salmonella is one danger that has caused many effects to consumers. Walsh writes about one incident when an outbreak “from tainted peanuts that killed at least eight people and sickened 600,” (Walsh 167). This incident left many people asking the same question, how can we trust the food that we put into our bodies? Salmonella, a type of food poisoning caused by bacteria found on different food types has caused an epidemic because of its domino effect on food and our health. Once one factory is contaminated, that factory could be housing both crops and meat, which is then transferred to our supermarkets and on our dinner tables. ...
Over the last decade, Southwest border violence has elevated into a national security concern. Much of the violence appears to stem from the competing growth and distribution networks that many powerful Mexican drug cartels exercise today. The unfortunate byproduct of this criminality reaches many citizens of the Mexican border communities in the form of indiscriminate street gang shootings, stabbings, and hangings which equated to approximately 6,500 deaths in 2009 alone (AllGov, 2012). That same danger which now extends across the border regions of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California has the potential for alarming escalation. Yet, despite the violence, evermore-brazen behavior continues to grow, as does America’s appetite for drugs. Even though drug-related violence mandates that law enforcement agencies focus on supply reduction, the Office of National Drug Control Policy should shift its present policy formulation efforts to only drug demand reduction because treatment and prevention efforts are inadequate and strategy has evolved little over the last three decades.
The drug control policy of the United States has always been a subject of debate. From Prohibition in the early 1930’s to the current debate over the legalization of marijuana, drugs have always been near the top of the government’s agenda. Drug use affects every part of our society. It strains our economy, our healthcare, our criminal justice systems, and it endangers the futures of young people. In order to support a public health approach to drug control, the Obama administration has committed over $10 billion to drug education programs and support for expanding access to drug treatment for addicts (Office). The United States should commit more government resources to protect against illegal use of drugs by youths and provide help for recovering addicts.
The Food and Drug Administration has played an important role in the American society known today. In fact the Food and Drug Administration affects every citizen of the United States. Its main goal is to ensure knowledge of products and protection to every citizen that range from atmospheric hazards to the medicine and food consumed in the United States. A strong workforce of inspectors is responsible for monitoring trading and safety standards in the food and drug industries. Although many tasks done by the FDA go unnoticed by the average citizen, an absence of the FDA would most definitely not go unnoticed. However the importance of the FDA today is just as important as to how it got initiated.
America’s food source has altered drastically in the last century and so has the health of many. Americans used to thrive on natural foods for nutritional value, now Americans thrive on processed and manufactured food for just for convenience. Food companies have changed the very way we view nutrition. They have taken chemistry to a whole new level and added what they want it to what we now call food even if that harms our bodies in the long run. Food companies have also caused many hard working farmers to lose their jobs. These food companies have lost insight as to what is truly important in a food product and don’t care if that means taking someone else’s job.
First off, The government of the United States of America is ultimately responsible for keeping our foods safe. Many of the Presidents of the major food companies also obtain government jobs. When a problem occurs with food and a food has to be recalled a change has to be made. Someone comes up with a law to make sure that the problem does not occur again. The government evaluates the law and either passes or denies it. The type of foods that we buy from the grocery store were pre evaluated by the government. I think the reason why most foods are unsafe and are still being obtained by local residents is because the major food companies work and make deals with government so
The third weakness is the fact that food tests, inspections, and the detection of contaminants are taken seriously only after an outbreak of some food-borne diseases, food poisoning, or deaths. The increase in the number of food establishments or outlets such as cold stores, hypermarkets, and supermarkets reported by the Public Health Director has also made inspection and control mo...
Food safety is an increasingly important public health issue. Governments all over the world are intensifying their efforts to improve food safety. Food borne illnesses are diseases, usually either infectious or toxic in nature, caused by agents that enter the body through the ingestion of food. “In industrialized countries, the percentage of people suffering from food borne diseases each year has been reported to be up to 30%. In the United States of America, for example, around 76 million cases of food borne diseases, resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths, are estimated to occur each year.” (Geneva 2)
Handling, processing, and preparation such as (cooking, cooling, reheating, holding/service) should be controlled to ensure that the food is not contaminated in any way.