The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Was Aware of Dangers To Food
According to an article in The Washington Post, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to grocery recalls and disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest grocery product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show.
The FDA seems to be incapable of adequately protecting the safety of the U.S. food supply. Grocery consumers should brace themselves for more grocery recalls in the coming weeks. Particularly troubling is the realization that there is no reasonable solutions for change on the table.
The scope of the recent grocery store recall of pet food demonstrates the vulnerability of the system. Pet food contaminated dogs, cats and now pork. Last week a California pork producer was notified by California health officials that hogs on their farm had probably consumed feed laced with melamine, the same chemical that forced the grocery store recalls of pet food. Pork from the animals raised on the farm has been recalled.
Most of us have taken the American food supply for granted, so the string of contaminations and recalls in the past year have become disturbing. Contaminated foods have included peanut butter carrying salmonella and spinach harboring E. coli. With each outbreak of foodborne illness, the government had ostensibly launched investigations to figure out what was contaminating the food and how it got there.
According to a story published Monday in The Washington Post, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has known all along about festering contamination problems in these very industries. The newspaper obtained documents showing the FDA had evidence of the problems but had taken only limited actions to address them.
A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hold a hearing to address the food contaminations.
Read more:
The Washington Post
The Denver Post
