Bush approves plan to tighten U.S. food safety rules
people, the peanut butter at least 625. Neither the FDA nor the USDA had the authority to order ConAgra to recall the products. In fact, all food recalls, except for those involving infant formula, are voluntary. Often, the government gets a product recalled by warning the company it could face bad publicity if it does not withdraw the food.
An advisory committee created in response to concerns about recalls of imported products — including dog food and toothpaste — suggested changing that. The commission, created in July in response to concerns about recalls of imported items, recommended to President Bush that the FDA be empowered to order recalls of products deemed a risk to consumers, an administration official said Monday. Congress would have to approve such a step. President Bush received the recommendations Tuesday, and accepted them.
A recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO noted that about 61 percent of the $1.7 billion the federal government spends on food safety went to the Agriculture Department in 2003, which is responsible for regulating about 20 percent of the food supply. The FDA, which is responsible for most of the remaining 80 percent, gets only about 29 percent of the total. In addition to making daily visual checks of all meat processing operations, the USDA tests between 10,000 and 12,000 samples of ground beef each year for E. coli contamination. This year, however, more than 30 million pounds of ground beef — enough to make 120 million quarter-pound burgers — has been pulled off the market in eighteen recalls because of possible E. coli contamination. That included the second-largest recall in U.S. history, which put Topps Meat out of business. The most recent ground beef recall, involving Cargill Inc., took place over the weekend. At least sixty-five sicknesses but no deaths have been linked to this year’s ground beef recalls. In 2006 there were just eight beef recalls and no reported illnesses. The CDC tracks food-borne illnesses in ten states as a barometer for the nation, and found that the rate of confirmed food-borne illness cases fell about 28 percent from 1996 to 2006, when there were 38.4 cases per 100,000 people. The CDC estimates 76 million of the roughly 300 million people who live in the United States get sick each year. More than 300,000 of those are hospitalized, and about 5,000 people die from food-borne illnesses each year.
