Following up on an earlier post regarding the FDA not doing such a great job regulating our food supply, this editorial ran in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer,
The FDA: Food Fright
A red-faced Food and Drug Administration now admits that tomatoes were not the cause of a nationwide salmonella outbreak.
The culprit, apparently, is Mexican-grown jalapeño peppers. But the agency responsible for ensuring the safety of 80 percent of the nation's food supply still isn't sure of the source of the food poisoning, months after it began.
The earliest-known victim got sick on April 10. In May, four cases of salmonella poisoning showed up in Pennsylvania, including people in Bucks and Lancaster Counties. On June 7, the FDA issued its warning about tomatoes, and many local groceries pulled them from produce aisles. Fast-food restaurants such as McDonald's and Taco Bell stopped serving tomatoes.
By this month, more than 1,200 people in 43 states had been sickened, the worst such outbreak in a decade. And now the FDA says, essentially, "Oops."
This episode is only the latest in a string of examples of the FDA's falling down in its mission to protect U.S. consumers. It's all the more reason for Congress to proceed with beefing up the agency's food-inspection capabilities.
If the FDA were doing its detective work effectively, it would benefit business owners, too. Just ask people in the agriculture industry who got blamed erroneously for the salmonella outbreak. (read on)
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