FDA proposes sweeping new food safety rules

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By MARY CLARE JALONICK

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Food and Drug Administration on Friday proposed the most sweeping food safety rules in decades, requiring farmers and food companies to be more vigilant in the wake of deadly outbreaks in peanuts, cantaloupe and leafy greens.

The long-overdue regulations could cost businesses close to half a billion dollars a year to implement, but are expected to reduce the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.

The FDA's proposed rules would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.

Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20130104/DA3JMB601.html

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This Sept. 28, 2011 file photo shows the sign leading to the Jensen Farms near Holly, Colo. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday proposed the most sweeping food safety rules in decades, requiring farmers and food companies to be more vigilant in the wake of deadly outbreaks in peanuts, cantaloupe and leafy greens. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)

[AllyCat]

1. Here I had hoped this would be a limit on frankenfoods

and chemicals. But of course, they are just going to crack down on the stuff people should have been doing anyway. Handling food? Wash hands. Not rocket science.

[Moosepoop]

2. I'm glad these things are being proposed, and hope they get passed.

Sure, a simple thing like food handlers washing hands is not rocket science, but what's surprising is that it isn't actually law, either. If these regs get passed, the companies will have to actually MAKE their employees wash their hands, which unfortunately many people have to be made to do, even when working with food that you may eat.

Making sure birds aren't flying over food and crapping on it isn't rocket science either, but it seems to be the case that without being MADE to make sure otherwise, food production companies have been allowing it.

The lack of enforceable law on these no-brainer issues has been a problem. This proposal would put long overdue law into place. That's a good thing.

[AllyCat]

3. You are right.

And I wasn't trying to trash the thread. The idea they have to take valuable production time to do basic sanitation will make corporate food producers mad. And that is why we need another law. I just hope it will be enforced.

[Dustlawyer]

4. We have a lot of problems with food safety. They brag that we have the safest seafood in the world.

Do you know how we test it? They smell it! LSU tested some shrimp caught after the Gulf oil spill that had been "passed" by food inspectors. They found hydrocarbons 1,000 times allowable limits. Give me a break!