Food safety due for improvement

10/3/07
It’s one of the things we count on our government to provide. When we buy groceries or go to a restaurant, we trust the food we get won’t make us sick. Sometimes our trust is misguided.
As a massive recall last week of ground beef that may contain the E. coli bacteria proves, food safety in this country has plenty of room for improvement. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who has made the problem one of her signature issues, again called for across-the-board improvements in the way we handle food safety. It’s far past time people listened.
The Topps Meat Co. of New Jersey issued a recall of 21.7 million pounds of ground beef last week after more than two dozen people reported getting sick from the company’s tainted product. The recall includes beef sold at local supermarkets, and raises fears again, after recent scares involving bagged salad, shrimp and even pet food, that what we eat may be harmful to our health.
DeLauro, who represents Connecticut’s 3rd District, has long pushed for consolidating food safety responsibilities into a single agency, and modernizing the regulatory and protection systems. It makes sense; one department ought to have authority to order recalls and promote safety, rather than the hodgepodge situation we have now. The system also needs to move faster, with adequate funding to keep safety as its No. 1 priority.
Everyone likes to rail against Big Government intruding into our lives, but this is a case where it really does matter who’s in charge of what panel and who is watching out for our safety. The system needs improvement, and an outbreak like this is the perfect time to move toward implementation. We don’t want to wait until something far worse forces us into action.