Obama Announces FDA Picks, Food Safety Measures

[RamboLiberal]

Source: ABC News

President Barack Obama says the nation's decades-old food safety system is a "hazard to public health" and in need of an overhaul, starting with the selection of a new head of the federal Food and Drug Administration.

Obama used his weekly radio and video address to announce the nomination of former New York City Health Commissioner Margaret Hamburg as FDA commissioner, and his choice of Baltimore Health Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein as her deputy.

The president also said he was creating a Food Safety Working Group to coordinate food safety laws throughout government and advise him on how to update them. Many of these laws, essential to safeguarding the public from disease, haven't been touched since they were written in the time of President Theodore Roosevelt, he said.

Obama said the food safety system is too spread out, making it difficult to share information and solve problems.

He also blamed recent underfunding and understaffing at FDA that has left the agency unable to conduct annual inspections of more than a fraction of the 150,000 food processing plants and warehouses in the country.



Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=7082089

[pipoman]

1. Roadblock Ahead

NAFTA and GATT make restriction on imported foods much more difficult, if panels from other nations say the food is safe there is no recourse for allowing it into US markets. Labeling with country of origin is another no-no on many categories of imported foods, impairs free trade don't ya know...Thank you GOP and Dems for these wonderful job creating, world friendly agreements and all they do for us..

[Finishline42]

6. Food Security

I think Canada and Mexico have filed a complaint against the US on the food labeling issue with WTO. I for one would like to know where the food I'm buying is coming from. If the frozen shrimp is coming from some mercury laden pond in China, I think I would just as soon pass. I don't understand why it's ok to put country of origin on everything else we buy, but not on food.

[OneBlueSky]

2. "Many of these laws, essential to safeguarding the public from disease, . . .

haven't been touched since they were written in the time of President Theodore Roosevelt" . . .

not to mention the fact that whatever laws are on the books are routinely dieregarded by those in charge of making sure our food is safe for consumption . . . an overhaul is most definitely needed, as are new laws and regulations -- and the teeth to make them work . . .

[BumRushDaShow]

3. Do take note that after dozens and dozens and dozens of hearings

over the decades, very little makes it out of the Congressional committees having those hearings to change the current system. The time for the ad nauseum faux outrage over the status quo needs to end. Stop having hearings and start passing the overhauled regulations. Year after year Congress bemoans the agency's lack of recall authority and every year, hearings and hearings and hearings are held after costly outbreaks result in more and more illnesses and corporate bankruptcies. Yet the agency STILL has no recall authority to this day because some other shiny object grabs Congress's attention, the dire situation continues on until the next outbreak, and impetus to change is promptly forgotten after someone utters the oxymoronic term "risk based".

USDA regulates 20% of the food and gets 80% of the funding to do so. FDA regulates 80% of the food and only gets 20% of the funding to do so. Why does this disparity continue? Because of politics.

Enough! :banghead:

[No Elephants]

5. Would it be too much to ask to put ALL food regulation under one agency?

[BumRushDaShow]

10. At one time it was

FDA was originally under USDA (and to this day, the appropriation for FDA is STILL under Agriculture and is NOT under HHS). But with the expansion of the mission to include more and more (devices, cosmetics, along with the drugs it already had, etc), the agency was placed under HEW (later to become HHS).

The agency should be STANDALONE (to remove the additional layers and layers of bureaucracy from HHS) just like EPA is standalone (and like FEMA was once standalone) and the head should report directly to the President. And in order to change the current food regulations to merge functions - consider the nightmare of creating DHS (Homeland Security), where pieces and parts of agencies were moved under a new, ultimately bloated structure. Right now, USDA has an inspector at every single meat plant in the nation and a county extension office in every single county in the nation. Meanwhile, over the past 15 years, FDA has closed 9 of its original 20 field laboratories and decimated all but 4 of the remaining ones, with food analysis removed from 2 of them. District Offices have closed and/or merged and Resident Posts (satellite offices in more far-flung areas nearer to many industries) have closed.

I don't think the average person, let alone any appointee who has never had contact with the agency, has any clue as to what FDA does. Few know that it regulates items as diverse as lasers used in discos or even those in DVD players. As soon as the average appointee learns these things, like how vitamins are considered "food supplements", or how consumer adjustable beds are considered medical devices, they are overwhelmed, collapse in shock, and leave, after trying to "change" things and instead leave a mess behind. Part of the problem is thinking that FDA = NIH or CDC and it does NOT. So continuing to bring in physicians to run the agency as if it were the National Institutes of Health dealing solely with "healthcare" guarantees continual failure of these higher ups to grasp the mission, which is bit more complex than it seems.

I think the agency can function just fine if it were considered a department rather than a lowly "agency", just based on the obscene amount of things it is called on to regulate (literally 25 cents on the dollar of the entire GDP), yet trying to do so with a staff of barely over 10,000. And with the likes of people like Waxman trying to add more and more things to do (tobacco, despite the existence of an agency called.... ahem.... "Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms"), the country might as well forget it and write the agency's epitaph.

With a Congress that keeps low-balling the funding or thinking that "user fees" from industry will save taxpayer dollars (which leads to bean-counting and hand-waving in order to meet the timeframes necessary to be able to actually keep the user fee money), past Administrations insisting on government "doing more with less", the continual use of nonsensical terms like "risk based" as a supposed strategy to lessen workload, along with the corporate hoods in the media expressing faux outrage for why a tiny entity that regulates some $4 trillion in goods can't do its job, nothing will change.

[No Elephants]

11. Thanks for this. Methinks our entire gubbamint could use a restructuring.

[BumRushDaShow]

12. Agree!!!

[jmowreader]

13. That's one of the shortcomings of HR 875

It creates a Food Safety Administration but it leaves it under HHS.

If they called it the Department of Food Security every Repuke in Congress would love it.

[No Elephants]

4. Did a little googling on Hamburg and she sounds like a good choice. Not an

industry insider or a lobbyist either. She was a Clinton pick, but turned him down because she was pregnant at the time. Sounds as though she would have even been good for Surgeon General.

[Finishline42]

7. H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009

Some dire warnings on this bill that has been introduced in the House.

Site to review and track progress:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-875

Analysis can be found here.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=12671

Is this what Obama has in mind?

[jmowreader]

14. "Campaign for Liberty" is some libertarian bullshit

Go to the index page. It belongs to Ron Paul.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul's_Campaign_for_Liberty

You want to know what the majesty of the free market gets us? Salmonella, e.coli and melamine in the public food supply.

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. Obama announced a ban on the slaughter of "downer" cows, also

Hooray.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090314/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_food_safety

[Nikia]

9. It's about time and I say this as a food processing professional

Although I don't believe that any of the companies that I have worked for were at major risk of causing a food borne disease outbreak, the attitudes that ownership and top management has bothers me. The state inspector that contracts with the FDA who we have seen doesn't give me much confidence in safe guards either if she spends as little time for her visit at other companies as ours. We have a few customer and "third party" audits, which are tougher. Those auditor seem to go along with the attitude though too that obeying every rule isn't always practical so we get our 90 something percent score and everything is fine in industry's eyes. With all these food borne outbreaks, it makes me think that 90 something percent isn't good enough. Food safety is too important for that. I'd like to think that bigger companies are better, but when I interviewed with a major nationally known company, they shared with me 75% of their plants weren't completely legally compliant including the majority which they had owned for over 10 years. With how things are, I no longer want to be part of the food industry, but with the economy as it is, I can't hope make enough outside of it to avoid being "low income". The older people in the industry tell me that I shouldn't worry about some things, because thing were much worse 25 years ago. That doesn't make me feel any better.

[1776Forever]

15. Hallelujah! This is truly wonderful news! We are held hostage in our country now by the food we ea...

So much went on with the Bush Administration or lack of it! Now we have to again clean up his mess! There is so much that Bush touched or rather didn't touch that leaves a legacy of shame and deaths in its wake!

:grr: