Yesterday the Senate passed a major bill which will drastically strengthen the FDA’s ability to monitor food safety to prevent unsafe foods from reaching the market rather than reacting to an outbreak of food-borne illnesses.
While the Senate and House bills still need to be reconciled, both versions give the FDA new means by which they can “recall tainted foods, increase inspections, demand accountability from food companies and oversee farming.” The bill also gives the FDA more control over imported foods by allowing inspection of foreign processing plants and setting farming standards for fruits and vegetables.
We can only hope the two sides can iron out the differences in these two bills so that we don’t have another incident like the peanut recall of 2009 or the salmonella outbreak from the eggs in 2010.
