TFAH Released Food Safety Report in April, Warning of Gaps, Risks
WASHINGTON, June 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Jeffrey Levi, Executive
Director of Trust for America's Health (TFAH), testified before the House
Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations today, in the
wake of this week's nationwide salmonella outbreak. Approximately 76
million Americans -- one in four -- are sickened by foodborne disease each
year. Of these, an estimated 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die,
costing the U.S. $44 billion annually. Levi urged FDA to provide detailed
strategic plans to Congress with corresponding budget increases, so that
crises of this nature are contained in a more effective way, or prevented
from reaching the kitchens and plates of the American public altogether.
Levi testified before the Subcommittee, "The current outbreak of
salmonella associated with tomatoes is a perfect demonstration of our need
for a modernized food safety system: It shouldn't have taken over 140
people getting sick from salmonella poisoning for the government to start
taking nation-wide action to protect the American people, but it did. Not
only has it taken us too long to recognize the threat, we are still
struggling to find its source, and we should have had systems in place to
prevent it in the first place. A truly successful food safety system is one
that we don't read about in the newspapers because it is working so well.
But as we have seen over the last week, instead we have a system that
places the lives of Americans at risk, undermines overall public confidence
in our food supply, and threatens the economic stability of farmers. The
current system is reactive, not preventive, meaning we are wasting millions
of dollars on responding to such threats rather than building proper
controls into the production system."
Read the full text of Levi's testimony HERE
http://healthyamericans.org/policy/testimony/Levi061208.pdf. Read TFAH's
report "Fixing Food Safety: Protecting America's Food Supply from
Farm-to-Fork" HERE http://healthyamericans.org/reports/foodsafety08/.
TFAH's 2008 report identified major gaps in the nation's food safety
system, including obsolete laws, misallocation of resources, and
inconsistencies among major food safety agencies. TFAH calls for a series
of actions to modernize the nation's food safety system by using strategic
inspection practices and state-of-the-art surveillance.
Key recommendations include:
-- Repeal outdated end-product and processing plant inspection mandates
and shift the emphasis of inspection practices to the prevention of
outbreaks and illnesses through the entire food production process and
supply chain;
-- Create mechanisms that allow inspection practices to keep pace with
changes in the industry;
-- Establish uniform performance standards and best practices that are
enforceable through actions including detention and recall authority and
civil penalty authority;
-- Require food safety education for commercial food handlers;
-- Improve monitoring of foreign imports and international practices;
and
-- Strengthen the FDA with increased funding and aligning resources
with high risk threats, with the long-term goal of realigning all federal
food safety functions.
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.
http://www.healthyamericans.org
SOURCE Trust for America's Health
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Related links:
http://healthyamericans.org
CONTACT:
Liz Richardson of the Trust for America's
Health, +1-202-223-9870 ext. 21, lrichardson@tfah.org
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