Obama hopes to increase food safety

WASHINGTON: Describing the U.S. government’s failure to inspect 95 percent of food-processing plants as ‘‘a hazard to the public health,’’ President Barack Obama promised to bolster and reorganize the nation’s fractured food-safety system.
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‘‘In the end, food safety is something I take seriously, not just as your president, but as a parent,’’ Mr. Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

* I% M& S( z* A8 M- E4 t) ?Mr. Obama announced on Saturday the creation of a Food Safety Working Group, which will include the secretaries of health and agriculture, to advise him on which laws and regulations need to be changed, to foster coordination across federal agencies, and to ensure that laws are enforced.

- H) Y" s% M; i  i3 P$ H% k5 mAlong with Mr. Obama’s announcement, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that ‘‘downer cattle,’’ or those that cannot walk, would be banned from slaughter. In the past, cattle that passed a pre-slaughter inspection and then became injured could be sold into the food system if an inspector certified that the meat as safe. This case-by-case exception system will be abandoned. Last year, only about 1,000 out of 34 million slaughtered cattle got into the food supply with such exceptions.

A bipartisan chorus of powerful lawmakers in Congress has promised to enact fundamental changes in the nation’s food-protection system. On Saturday, Mr. Obama made clear that he not only supported that legislative effort but that he also might push to expand it.
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' S! ~  y/ K" T! H/ dA dozen agencies share responsibility for ensuring the safety of America’s food supply, an oversight system that critics and government investigators have for years said needed major revisions.
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$ @! f5 y& T8 t1 A8 nMr. Obama announced that he would nominate Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, a former New York City health commissioner, to be commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
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9 N  X, S  C# hThirty-five years ago, the F.D.A. did annual inspections of about half of the nation’s food-processing facilities. Last year, the agency inspected just 7,000 of the nearly 150,000 domestic food facilities, and its oversight of foreign plants, which provide a growing share of the U.S. food supply, was even spottier.

Experts have long debated whether the F.D.A. should increase inspections or rely instead on private auditors and more detailed safety rules. By calling the limited number of government inspections an ‘‘unacceptable’’ public health hazard, Mr. Obama came down squarely on the side of increased government inspections.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/15/america/address.php

Food safety is significantly important for a country ,even for all the world.There are so many examples of hazards of food poisoning that our country should also focus on the events and prevent them.