Trust for America's Health Calls on Senate to Act Now to Reform U.S. Food Safety
Posted on: Wednesday, 7 October 2009, 10:45 CDT
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- To mark Food Safety Action Day, Trust for America's Health (TFAH) calls on the U.S. Senate to act expeditiously to reform the nation's food safety system.
"The food safety system hasn't been fundamentally modernized for about 100 years. Technologies and processes have changed a lot since then, and it's about time we bring food safety laws and policies into the 21st century. We need to upgrade safety standards, inspection practices, outbreak detection capabilities, and recall systems," said Jeff Levi, Ph.D., Executive Director of TFAH. "The current fragmented, antiquated system has tragic consequences. Millions of Americans get needlessly sick and thousands die each year from foodborne illnesses that could have been prevented. The Senate should act now to modernize food safety laws to effectively deal with today's biggest threats."
U.S. Senator Richard Durbin has introduced the Food Safety Modernization Act, which would focus on reforming the food safety system to focus on preventing foodborne illness outbreaks instead of maintaining a reactive system that only responds after an outbreak has already occurred. In July 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.
Approximately 76 million Americans -- one in 4 -- are sickened by foodborne diseases each year. Of these, an estimated 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die. Medical costs and lost productivity due to foodborne illnesses in the U.S. are estimated to cost $44 billion annually.
In recent years, there have been a series of high-profile foodborne illness outbreaks, including Salmonella contamination of peanut butter products and jalapeno and Serrano peppers; E. coli outbreaks in spinach and lettuce; along with reports on dangerous cattle slaughter practices and unsafe farm-raised fish in China.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Science Board concluded that the U.S. food supply "grows riskier each year" and the Government Accountability Office found federal oversight of food safety to be one of the government's "high risk" programs.
TFAH has issued a series of reports calling for reform of U.S. food safety laws, policies, and practices, which are available on TFAH's Web site www.healthyamericans.org.
Trust for America's Health is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to saving lives by protecting the health of every community and working to make disease prevention a national priority.
SOURCE Trust for America's Health
Source: PR Newswire
Related Articles
- New Polls, Reports Highlight The Need To Update The US Food Safety System
- New Polls, Reports Highlight The Need To Update The U.S. Food Safety System And To 'Make Our Food Safe For The Holidays'
- Enhanced Food Safety and Systems Interoperability the Themes of 'Food Traceability Interoperability Summit 2010'
- United Fresh Food Safety Strategies Included in White House Food Safety Recommendations
- CEO Of Kellogg’s Speaks To Congress About Increasing Food Safety
- Governor Rendell Forms Food Safety Council to Protect Public Health, Food Supply
- Trust for America's Health Applauds President Obama's Call for a Complete Review of the U.S. Food Safety System
- Food-Safety Labeling Law Draws Opposition
- State Could Lose Its Food Safety Labels: House Bill May Unify Standards.
 |
 |
User Comments (0)
RSS Feeds