Most people do not spend their days wondering where their next meal is going to come from, but as the economic situation gets worse and jobs get harder to find it is becoming an every occurring issue in the United States today. Not only will some of us have to worry about with what money will we buy our food, but now we will all start having to worry about where our food is coming from and is it safe for us to consume. We are moving toward a safer tomorrow every day by regulating certain parts of our food supply system. No matter how long it takes, it is clear that there is always opportunity for improvement in making our Nation healthier and safer. 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... ... middle of paper ... ...does now to ensure our food safety. Thirty years from now I bet we will not have to worry about food borne illnesses and contamination of imported products because our government agencies will be so sophisticated and high tech that all of those worries will be long forgotten. I think President Obama has done our country some good by passing The Food Safety Modernization Act back in January of 2011. As I mentioned in this paper, some disagree with this law and I see both sides of the argument. Small farm owners at home and overseas could potentially be put out of business by this law, but then again do we as consumers really want to be eating food that is not safe? This shows me that he is concerned about our Nation’s health and reducing the number of foodborne illnesses every year. I am hoping that we will continue to build on this law and improve with every year.
McCoy, J. J. How Safe Is Our Food Supply? New York: F. Watts, 1990. Print.
In the documentary, Food Inc., we get an inside look at the secrets and horrors of the food industry. The director, Robert Kenner, argues that most Americans have no idea where their food comes from or what happens to it before they put it in their bodies. To him, this is a major issue and a great danger to society as a whole. One of the conclusions of this documentary is that we should not blindly trust the food companies, and we should ultimately be more concerned with what we are eating and feeding to our children. Through his investigations, he hopes to lift the veil from the hidden world of food.
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...
This law was never passed, even though they worked for years on it. The sad thing about all of this is the incidence of people dying from contaminated food is astronomical. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates “1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases” every single year (Estimates of Foodborne Illness in the United States). The amount o...
“Each year, around 50 million Americans get sick from eating unsafe food, resulting in more than 100,000 hospitalizations, 3,000 deaths and countless days of missed work.” (CDC, 2011). Here are some of the unsafe foods, making it into our food supply. Now there are 3 major
RM: I agree that food safety is important. However, as I have stated before it is the market that should promote food safety not government regulations and legal liabilities. This will promote a free society and economy. The free market will ultimately protect the consumer’s interest out of the companies’ interest to sell their goods to a wider verity of people. According to McFadden and Stefanou (2016), there are several examples where the free market is working in favor of higher quality foods.
According to "Safe to Eat" by Dr. Linda Harris talked about food safety foodborne diseases. People have many food choices, but they don't know how this foods are prepared and which place this foods are manufactured. In 2011, when tsunami hit Miami, thousands of farmlands were flooded. She said there are 312,798,753 people in the U.S and 6,985,654,299 of the world population and this number is going to increase, she asked how we can feed all these people. In the world wide, one of seven people are suffering from hunger. By 2011, Americans start to deal with obesity as much as it is related with food safety. Americans have started to change their way of food consumption from pyramid guidance after consumption for
Food recall has substantially increased in the food industry within the last decade, according to insurance company Swiss Re. In 2004, 240 FDA-regulated (non-meat) products and 48 USDA-regulated (meat and poultry) products had recalls. In 2014, 565 FDA-regulated (non-meat) products and 94 USDA-regulated (meat and poultry) products had recalls. The main reason for the recall is due to microbiological contamination. The more stops food takes before it enters the U.S., the more opportunities there are for contamination, says Bill Marler, an attorney and an oft-cited authority on food-borne illness. [3]
Food safety is a high profile issue facing consumers, agricultural marketers, farmers and governments. In the United States, estimates of the number of illnesses each year from microorganisms in food range from 6.5 to 33 million people, while deaths could be as high as 9,000. Lost productivity from food borne illnesses are estimated to be in the range US$7 billion to US$23 billion per year. Just one incident in Japan in 1996 involving radish resulted in ten deaths and 9,000 people made ill.
The Food Safety Modernization Act was created by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to ensure all
“The United States' food safety regulatory system is in urgent need of reform ... Congress needs to act now to modernize the FDA and fund it sufficiently. The cost of inaction is high, both financially and in terms of illnesses and deaths Americans have endured during the numerous contaminated food outbreaks that have recently occurred.” (DeWaal 1) Flaws in the food system are causing an incredible amount of illness within the US. The US people cannot wait any longer for the solutions to our broken food system. (DeWaal 1) “Reform of the food safety system is overdue. CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] estimates that foodborne diseases cause 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths annually. Economists believe that these illnesses pose a huge burden to society, with estimates for emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and lost work ranging from 40 billion to well over 100 billion dollars annually. Even if these numbers were cut in half, they are still too high. These are illnesses and deaths that are largely preventable.” (DeWaal 1) All we need to do is make a change so our food system does not remain corrupt and we would automatically fix so many current issues. Millions of lives could easily be saved, as well as money due to the decrease of hospital visits caused by contaminated and
Since countries like Latin America signify below the ethical measures as the standards found within the U.S., accommodating SA8000 standards enables Chiquita to raise the bar on food safety, which is important to prevent sickness, labor standards to support human rights, and employee health and safety for
Unnevehr, L. (2006) Food safety as a global public good: Is there underinvestment? Available at: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/25733/1/pl06un01.pdf [Accessed: 20 April 2014]
In comparison to food sovereignty, food security is relies more deeply on supply; more specifically, whether or not there is enough food available to meet normal dietary requirement across the entire population. In turn, even if there is enough food available, ...