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.
Almost every angle of the food industry can be considered dangerous. It is dangerous to make the food, as a meatpacking job is one that is viewed as having abnormally high risks; however when the food is handed over a counter on a tray or prepared in a family of four’s kitchen, it poses a huge risk to humankind. Foodborne illnesses are all too common and almost everybody has the possiblity of contracting a foodborne illness. These are life threatening diseases that need to be monitored and regulated; therefore the enforcement of government regulations in the fast food industry could potentially save many lives that are lost annually due to the numerous factors that need regulation.
Some examples of these measures are more frequent testing, more adequate labeling, and increasing the number of suppliers of particular ingredients. At the same time, people’s consumption of particular products in response to recalls has changed. (Peake 13) In a general sense, people tend to consume less of a particular product once a well-known recall is publicized. This alone should be reason for a company to “step up their game” and insure that food safety is at an all-time
Furthermore, food safety is a major issue in the United States. Foodborne illness has caused an estimated 1 and 6 Americans to be sickened, 128,000 hospitalizations, and cause 3,000 deaths each year (http://www.sustainabletable.org/). These numbers may seem shocking, but they are all too real. All of the high levels
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...
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...
As my local congressmen and an upstanding citizen of the United States, I feel it necessary to inform you of a problem that currently affects our country. In 2006, a bill known as Kevin's law was proposed to congress. The law was named after a young boy who died after eating a contaminated hamburger. Although it never passed, Kevin's law sought to prevent contaminated meat and poultry products from entering the food supply. In 2011, a similar law known as the FDA food modernization act was introduced to the congress. This piece of legislation was proposed by congresswoman Betty Sutton and later signed into law by President Obama.
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.
If I were to ask people, “Do you see anything wrong with the food system in America?” the majority of people would respond “No”. After all, America is the best country on Earth. How could the alleged best country on Earth be running on a tainted system that only cares about profit? It was not until I did my own research that I uncover the many, many flaws. After watching the documentary Food Inc., it is very evident that the current system providing the nation with food and food safety is broken. In order to amend the current system, there needs to be changes in three key areas: the government, the producers, and the consumers.
Filipovic, Jill. “To Save Americans’ Health, Government Must Intervene In Food Industry.” Aljazeera America. n.p November 17, 2013. Web. 27 March 2014.
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.
The Food and Drug Administration, or the FDA, was originally introduced with the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act, which was passed in response to public outrage at unhygienic conditions described by Upton Sinclair’s book “The Jungle”. The formation of this agency was advocated by at-the-time chief chemist of the Bureau of Chemistry of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Harvey Washington Wiley. The Bureau of Chemistry preceded the FDA, and eventually the position of chief chemist evolved into the commissioner of food and drugs. Today, the FDA ensures the safety of food, medical devices, cosmetics, and human and veterinary drugs.
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)
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...
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...