http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090314/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_food_safetyWASHINGTON – 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.
Time has a profile of the good doctor: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1884627,00.html
Now, I have no problem with the idea of making our food supply safer, but I'm not sure a doctor has the practical knowledge necessary to tackle such a project. Why do we regulate food and drugs under the same department anyway? Because you swallow pills and you swallow food? I really can't come up with any meaningful similarity between the two industries. I can't wrap my mind around any reason to regulate food and drugs together.
I've read through HR 875, "The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009", which is currently in committee in the House. It's got some BROAD language in it. For example, "The term ‘food production facility’ means any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation." That sounds as though it includes backyard chicken coops and any yard that has multiple fruit trees, which seems a little crazy to me. Also, it sounds like if I grow all of my own food for personal consumption that I'd still come under the regulations, including whatever absurd record-keeping and inspection rules they make up (I see no distinction made between food grown for sale and food grown for personal consumption). Again, seems a little nuts to me to tell me I can't feed myself unless I follow the goddamn rules of the government. Full text of HR 875 is here: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-875
I can't imagine how many small producers such a bill will put out of business. Its main accomplishment would likely be to further consolidate (and thus weaken) our food production capacity into the large ag companies like ADM and Monsanto while maybe making it too costly for folks like my dad to operate. Of course, the goddamn bill is so fucking vague that who knows what it really means; the devil will be in the regulations promulgated by the FDA in implementing the new law if the bill gets passed.
Of course, we won't know how much damage HR 875 may cause until it's too late. The government really does want to protect me and keep me dependent on it from the cradle to the grave doesn't it? Whatever, fuck that.