New FDA Reporting Requirement To Make Food Safer?
by svigneault on Sep 9, 2009 • 1:41 pm No CommentsThe Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday unveiled a new electronic database where manufacturers must notify the government if they believe one of their products is likely to cause sickness or death in people or animals.
I think that news yesterday from the FDA, which you can read here, is a step in the right direction, but can anyone tell me how it is going to keep bad actors from continuing to act badly? If and when a food processor of peanuts, let’s say, decides to ignore obviously large amounts of sickening rat matter in the batter, is he or she going to email the FDA with self-incriminating information?
How about this? If someone is making a product he or she believes is likely to cause sickness or death in people or animals, stop making the product, immediately, or go directly to jail. There doesn’t seem to be any teeth like that in this new requirement:
Regulators said the database will help the FDA prevent widespread illness from contaminated products and direct inspectors to plants that pose a high safety concern…. “There’s been a lag time; we learn about problems after people get sick,” said Michael Taylor, senior adviser to the FDA’s commissioner. “This is intended to inform us of contamination problems before people get sick.”
In theory, in an ideal world… maybe. In reality, we’ll just have to wait and see.
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