US Food Safety Revamp

The US President has committed US$ one billion to a major revamp of Food Safety in the US following the recent Salmonella outbreak.

A Food Safety Working Group is to be established to provide the direction for tightening up food safety inspections and ensure compliance of regulation. It will be chaired jointly by the Secretaries of Agriculture and Health. In this weeks radio address President Obama stated; “In the end, food safety is something I take seriously, not just as your president, but as a parent. There are certain things only a government can do, and one of those things is ensuring that the foods we eat, and the medicines we take, are safe and do not cause us harm.”

The President will also be appointing a new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner to take the lead in modernizing the inspection process and ensure that all inspection authorities work more closely together to identify problems more quickly and then to have processes in place for controlling them.

A large part of the US$ one billion injection will be spent on bringing more inspectors into the FDA to increase the number of inspections and the likelihood of identifying problems before they occur in food businesses.
Another change to food safety in the USA will be the banning of allowing “downer” cattle to be slaughtered and the meat used for human consumption. Downer cows are those that are sick or disabled and may be a possible source of “Mad Cow Disease”.

The US Food Safety Modernization Act (2009) is part of this revamp.

In Australia, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) will obviously be monitoring all changes in the USA, as review of food safety law from other countries is part of the assessment process used by FSANZ in developing our food safety laws.