Hope Wang 6 th Hour 2/22/24 Researched Argument FDA: The Influences Behind America’s Food Safety The creation of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was a journey. One difficult enough to have a book written about. The Poison Squad, by Deborah Blum, is a novel describing “one chemist’s single-minded crusade for food safety at the turn of the twentieth century.” In this novel, she explores the journey and many hurdles of Harvey Wiley’s goal for food safety in America, which ultimately led to the passing of the Food and Drug Safety Act— leading to the creation of the FDA. However, multiple in the novel, Blum points out that Wiley, the Father of the Food and Drug Safety Act, did not act independently. He was helped by countless other people, …show more content…
However, despite it’s large role, surprisingly, the FDA is largely funded by user fees, which are fees that corporations pay to get their products reviewed for approval. This creates the interesting scenario where the FDA is receiving funding from the people they’re supposed to be facilitating — and therefore are incentivized to get (and accept) more applications. Although since the allowance of user fees, FDA’s resources and efficiency have dramatically increased, the same cannot be said for the quality of the checks. Since the FDA has allowed funding from user fees, there has been an increase in the approval of new drug applications, “from 38% in 2005 to 61% in 2018.” With this heightened approval rate, we also see a heightened recall rate as “before the user fee act was approved, 21% of medications were removed or had new black box warnings as compared to 27% afterwards.” User-fees may of made the FDA faster and more efficient, however, is the clumsiness that came with it worth …show more content…
The FDA, like all other government agencies, experiences lobbying and high amounts of it. Companies, who are concerned about their product approval, spend hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of dollars lobbying the FDA to approve or maintain their products, and it works. From 2012 to 2019, there were 46,522 recalls with 40,330 of them being related to non-lobbying firms and only 6,192 of the recalls being for lobbying firms. With this, lobbying firms also received less severe recall classifications, on average, with lobbying firms having a mean classification of 2.00 and non-lobbying firms having one of 1.82 - the higher the number the better. Not just that, companies that lobbied experienced an easier process with the FDA since “lobbying reduces the number of days to approval.” Since the FDA is partially funded by companies, they are incentivized to keep products on the market to receive more money from companies lobbying and submitting more projects for approval. Interestingly enough, this bias towards lobbying companies “only appears in food recalls, but not in drug and device recalls.” This is a very common
...ous tests (Law, 2004). They also must now have the FDA’s approval in order for a certain food or drug to be sold directly to consumers. Also the marketplace has changed, due to new ways to process the product in a more safe and effective manner. There were also changes due to political, economical, social, and cultural changes since 1906. In conclusion, the Food and Drug Act paved the way for the Progressive movement and food safety in America.
In Lee Ann Fisher Baron’s “Junk Science,” she claims that the “food industry with the help of federal regulators” sometimes use “[a science that] bypasses [the] system of peer review. Presented directly to the public by…‘experts’ or ‘activists,’ often with little or no supporting evidence, this ‘junk science’ undermines the ability…[for] everyday consumers to make rational decisions” (921). Yet Americans still have a lot of faith in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to a 2013 Pew Research study, 65% of Americans are “very favorable” or “mostly favorable” of the FDA. When it comes to what people put in their bodies, the FDA has a moral obligation to be truthful and transparent. The bottom line of the FDA’s myriad of responsibilities is to help protect the health of Americans. Deciding what to eat is a critical part of living healthily, and consumers must be able to trust that this massive government agency is informing them properly of the contents of food. While the FDA does an excellent job in many areas, it has flaws in other areas. One of its flaws is allowing the food industry to print food labels that are deceptive, unclear, or simply not true (known as misbranding). This is quite the hot topic because a Google search for “Should I trust food labels” returns well over 20 million results, many of which are blog posts from online writers begging their readers not to trust food labels. HowStuffWorks, a division of Discovery Communications, published an online article whose author claims that “[the food industry] will put what they want on labels. They know the game….” While the food industry is partially at blame for misbranding, the FDA is allowing it to happen. If a mother tells her children that it is oka...
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...
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA or USFDA) is a federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, one of the United States federal executive departments. The FDA is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the regulation and supervision of food safety, tobacco products, dietary supplements, prescription and over-the-counter pharmaceutical drugs (medications), vaccines, biopharmaceuticals, blood transfusions, medical devices, electromagnetic radiation emitting devices (ERED), cosmetics, animal foods & feed and veterinary products.
Along side of the FDA was the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. This put strains on and required the slaughterhouses to clean up. Sanitation became a big issue, and the slaughterhouses were now inspected for cleanliness. Also, every animal carcass to be inspected and pass inspection before it could be processed and used any further; it had to be cleared of infection and diseases.
US Department of Agriculture which was renamed the FDA in 1930. The responsibilities of the
Whorton James, review of Pure Food: Securing the Pure Food and Drug Acts of 1906, by
Government factors into the equation of the argument. Critics of the drug industry say that there is not enough regulation, while supporters of the pharmaceutical companies argue that there is too much regulation and that that is one...
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...
On January 4, 2011 President Obama signed into law The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). This law has shed new light on the safety and security of our food supply. The last update to the food safety laws in the United States was in 1938. The food safety modernization act pays special attention at trying to modernize the food safety policies in the United States in hopes to prevent problems and concerns before they happen. As we all know, most of our food comes from overseas or sometimes from your neighboring state. The food products travel by car, truck, airplane, boat, or even train. We are all very happy to be receiving our bananas from Costa Rica and all of our other fresh fruits and vegetables that are imported into the United States, but we never stop to think about what pathogens are contaminating our produce and other foods on the way over and if they are safe for us to eat. In an article by Neal Fortin, he states that the law also gives the FDA new standards to hold imported foods to the domestic food standards and it also encourages the FDA to establish and develo...
There are a few factors that led to the rise of federal regulatory state, one being the revealing muckracking press. Their tactics on exposing the flaws of the government and big markets led the rise in support for regulation in not only food and drug but in every other regulation process. For example The Jungle by Upton Sinclair which exposed the meat market and its many flaws in the process it goes through to process the meat. Citizens were in awe when the truth was released in this book along with other articles that emphasized the crude reality that was disgust to the American consumers of meat products. I believe this book was a big step towards the prime of the regulation era and it did so without directly hitting the meat market but...
In the beginning of the 1900’s, the country made dramatic changes toward progressivism in domestic issues. These changes were first made by President Theodore Roosevelt, who signed the Pure Foods and Drug Act of 1906. This bill was made, “For preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for regulating traffic therein, and for other purposes.” This would help bring progressive change to many manufacturing industries that were newly developed in the late nineteenth century. These jobs were dangerous to an equal and fair way of living for the American working class and were resolved by this act.
Others believe regulating drug prices limits investment, innovation, and competition in the pharmaceutical industry. In many ways both views are correct, yet the latter may have more long term lasting damage. For a drug to get to market it must go through several stages of research and development (Abbott and Vernon). Starting with discovery research, preclinical testing on animals, three phases of clinical trials on humans, and finally FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approval (Abbott and Vernon).
Do you know what FDA is? Do you know how effective it is? Do you know what it stands for? Do you know how it's useful in our community? Well keep reading and you'll find out. A simple definition of FDA is the responsibility of protecting the public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices; and by ensuring the safety of our nation's food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation. FDA also has to review, approve and monitor the safety in a timely manner. FDA sees that the public has access to truthful and non-misleading products.
Ever since human beings have walked this earth they have been eating food and preparing meals. There really is no exact date as to when man first began to cook their meals but whenever that revelation occurred it would change the way humans look at food forever. Now let us fast forward a few hundred thousand years to the 21st century, these days food safety has become a huge priority at the national level. Many programs and departments have been created to bring the public’s attention to this issue. The most notable agency in regards to food safety is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA is responsible for protecting the overall public health of American citizens by regulating foods, among others. More specifically the FDA oversees almost everything we put into our bodies, legally that is. The FDA is responsible for recalling contaminated food, regulating dietary labels, etc . So how does this agency pertain to food safety in the home? The answer is quite simple; virtually everything that the average American will eat for dinner has most likely been regulated by this agency. They are responsible for protecting what we put into our bodies, whether we want to admit it or not, we are trus...