"A lot sounds to me like buzzwords from a past administration."

Ya know Rosa, eventually, buzzwords from a past administration repeated enough times by the *current* administration become buzzwords from the current administration.

Maybe the FDA should get with the Gitmo guys, take advice on a new buzzword strategy.

Well, we were left with a train wreck from Bush's "administration" which did little administrating. So, a lot of the same people are still there who had no guidance or experience. You have to develop your identity when you have nothing to go on. AT LEAST they were given an increase in their budget which is a hell of a lot more than Bush ever did. He just gave out tax cuts to the wealthy. You saw how well that worked.

Well, we were left with a train wreck from Bush's "administration" which did little administrating. So, a lot of the same people are still there who had no guidance or experience. You have to develop your identity when you have nothing to go on. AT LEAST they have been given an increase in their budget which is a hell of a lot more than Bush ever did. He just gave out tax cuts to the wealthy. You saw how well that worked.

Why do people assume more regulation is good? The CPSIA ([overlawyered.com]) is putting people like my neighbor -- a stay-at-home mom who makes board games out of organic cotton to help make ends meet -- out of business. She can't afford the $4,000 in testing per game it will take her to stay in business. Old library books are being thrown away. Motorcycles have become part of this -- because, perhaps, a child will lick the exhaust pipe? Whoops -- unintended consequences anyone?

@Amy Alkon: NAM is all over the appointment of Inez Moore Tenenbaum to the CPSA post. They're looking to work with her during the delays to draft smarter regulations. There's a ton of work being done at all sorts of grassroots levels. The ALA is all over the books - they're not really even impacted (most libraries don't have 20+ year old children's books in their circulating collections).

Oh and not motorcycle - ATVs. You're thinking of the ban on ATVs designed for children that will go into effect in 2011.

You have to remember, this is what happens when we pass laws in quick and swift response to bad things. Lead toys from China - BOOM! We get strict laws that aren't thought through very well.

Next thing you know, we'll get super-broad, vague legislation that allows a President to circumvent the Constitution in the name of national security just because it makes everyone feel extra-American...

@Stephmo: I for one would like to see more efficient and effective enforcement of the regulations we already HAVE. Regulations are useless if not closely monitored and enforced.

...don't yet have a plan to make our food any safer.

@supercereal: Perhaps instead of looking solely for "immeidately dangerous" outside contaminants in our food, they should work to phase out current/dated food processing practices still in use and look at some other nations' methods.

Yesterday I was talking with my friend in Germany and got on the subject of diabetes. I told him how my boss had been diagnosed with it when he was 31, and that several of my extended family members also had it. My friend was incredulous as he had never heard of anyone getting diabetes that young, nor knowing that many people to have it period. He only knows one person at all that has diabetes, his uncle's brother, who is 89 and only had it for a little over a year. Diabetes is just an example of a condition that could be prevented in many cases through proper eating habits starting with the quality of the food that is eaten, and when that quality is low, you're pretty much doomed from the get-go.

I don't claim to be a nutritionist, but when a pharmaceutical rep of 15 years can't read the ingredients list without a couple double-takes or stammers, you know all that crap can't be good for you.

@FooSchnickens: It's definitely unfortunate that folks are getting diabetes younger and younger in this country. It illustrates the effects of "quick and cheap" food culture, I suppose (consumed every now and then, junk food isn't necessarily bad...I just had a delicious Taco Bell meal for the first time in awhile last night...mmmm).

But I especially agree with your first point. Instead of being purely and completely reactive (i.e. how do we fix problems that have already happened!?), government agencies like the FDA (and especially the TSA, though that's a different story...) need to be proactive in making sure the current methods are as good and safe as they can reasonably be.

@Amy Alkon: No they are not. Please stop spreading disinformation. The CPSC make clear exceptions for small crafters. ETSY was at the forefront of making sure the CPSC did something about the unintended consequences.

The problem started when food production began to evolve to large scale production & distribution but regulation was still running on 1960's type standards.

It used to be that the only out of area food you came in contact with was out of season produce or a few things like Mac & Cheese. Now it seems like everything is from some massive production conglomerate and comingled in huge batches.

The tainted lettuce and spinach recalls from a few years ago are an ideal example. They took multiple batches of product and put them in huge washing vats. That took a contamination from part of one field and spread it to all of the product produced at that facility. This caused that contamination to end up in multiple brands of product and be all over the country thus making a HUGE contamination issue. If the local produce farm has a bad batch of spinach it is one "brand" of spinach and might impact maybe 30 people all in one small area.
The peanut issue follows the same flaw in our system.

@savdavid: Tax cuts during a war: a winning strategy for America!

@bohemian: Isn't it kind of sad when consumers, brainwashed, fight against their own interests? It's like, "Please poison my family, please. I'll even help!"

The FDA is and has been for a long time chronically understaffed. This means that enforcement of the regulations they have in place is, at best, random and that corruption to the system is very easy as the employees who are there are desperate for shortcuts. Rather than throwing money at new regulations, throwing money at getting sufficient employees and a good organizational system to enforce what's already established would actually be of benefit to the country.

One thing they need is to have a default fine level that is enough to bring an errant company to its knees. I mean, REALLY hurt. Where, if they got two of 'em within a couple years, they'd be bankrupt.
It'd be a great justification for not following lazy practices, or penny-shaving ones. It'd help our deficit (or better, use fines to fund more safety programs). It'd force companies to tighten up their supply chain (no more no-name vendors). It'd probably improve workers' lives (too cheap to pay living wages? Probably too cheap to produce healthy products, too).
And, any Exec Staff would face criminal charges, as a default, when people die. Federally prosecuted, and their companies barred from paying more than 50% of their legal bill.

@savdavid: So you're saying the current administration is filled with "good ol boys" from the previous one? CHANGE?

@Amy Alkon: You should REALLY read more Consumerist. They covered the exemptions months ago:
[consumerist.com]

@bohemian: Yup.
Aren't almost ALL of the poisonings we read about are the result of switching from local processors to massively huge ones?

Now, they're suggesting as a solution to radiate everything. Just nuke it until it goes in the dark.

Turning away from the Frankenfood process we've created makes more sense. It only saves us pennies, that we'd gladly pay for non-toxic food. It's a recent change, so we know switching back is perfectly viable. The current one seems ideally designed to ensure that any time fatal contaminations happen anywhere, they're purposefully dispersed across the entire country, no checks, no balances, no warning, no recalls (until they're too late)?

It's madness. If terrorists did this, we'd go nuts. Greedy processors do it and we shrug and take it.

@FooSchnickens: Wow, an appeal to ignorance, anecdotal evidence, and some statistics of small numbers? That's a good amount of logical fallacies right there.

I especially like the red herring at the end. So this imaginary pharmaceutical rep has a learning disability, and that proves your point? I just picked up the can of Pepsi max I am drinking, and even though I used to stutter as a child, only took one time to read aloud the ingredients.

@Trai_Dep: The consumers do that themselves, don't they? Usually one publicized recall is enough to bring a company to it's knees. Look at Topps Beef, Peanut Corp of Amercia, etc...

@NoExpirationDate_GitEmSteveDave: Exactly! And while the Obama administration can use the "train wreck" left by the Bush administration as a starting point, or perhaps an example of what NOT to do, they've got to start being independently creative, too, or we WILL have the same problems with no solutions in sight.

Besides, regardless of which party is in office, it seems like the best way to solve ANY problem in Washington is just to throw money at it. This FDA issue is just the next in what, to me, seems to be a growing number of bandaids-placed-on-sucking-chest-wounds that we hope can be cured by pumping money we don't have into things. Oversight, anyone?

@HelloSailor_GitEmSteveDave: Heck, I have a stutter and I can read ingredients lists with a high rate of fluency. The words aren't that complicated.

@Amy Alkon: The problem with CPSIA has been the poor implementation by the current CPSC acting chair, who doesn't like the law and doesn't want to implement it.

It's really remarkable; I go to hearings on CPSIA somewhat often and the exchange is almost always

Member of Congress: Why don't you use the authority granted to you by this law to grant some common-sense exemptions so these people who are complaining can stay in business?
Nancy Nord: The law doesn't let us do that.
Member of Congress: Uh, yes it does, we wrote it.

Ha, I was at this hearing, and it wasn't as confrontational as the AP article makes it out to be. I remember reading this right after we left and noticing that they picked up the one sort of contentious bit. Dr. Sharfstein had a lot of ideas and answers for the subcommittee, and I got the impression that things were going to be better at FDA than they'd been for a while.

We'll see in another week or so, as the House is planning to drop some big FDA overhaul legislation, and hopefully it will incorporate a lot of Rosa's existing bill.

More inspectors sounds great, as long as they're well trained and go where they belong; e.g., regularly follow up on businesses that were cited.

Is there anything in the works that will allow the FDA to force a recall? I think that would make manufacturers more diligent about cleanliness, and would reduce delays in recalls that still had to happen.

That's how we fix failing government institutions. More money.

Kids failing in public schools? More money!

FDA keeps failing to keep our food safe? More money!

How about allowing private companies to compete with the government?

I do not listen to or trust anything that DeLauro has to say, especially when it comes to issues with the FDA. Do you realize that her husband (Stan Greenberg) works for Monsanto among other companies.

(He is the CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a polling and consulting firm co-founded with James Carville and Bob Shrum of Democracy Corps, a non-profit organization which produces left-leaning political strategy.) *taken from Wikipedia*

@Alex Chasick: That's part of the GOP strategy, btw. Bury their stalwarts into the bureaucracy then, once embedded, make the application as onerous and haphazard as they can, so they can pull a Heck of a Job Brownie, and say, "See: government regulation SUX! Better to trust the Chinese Poison Train!"
These people should, by law, be forced to feed their own families the crappy dog food they're trying to cram down others' childrens' throats.

@NoExpirationDate_GitEmSteveDave: Although, our nation has the highest rates of processed foods/food supply, and we also have the highest rates of diabetes, obesity, etc. Worse, we PAY for the privilege, thru subsidies and corporate welfare.
So it's far more than just anecdotal evidence.
What he's saying (real food trumps fake food) has merit.

@MooseOfReason: Yes, we should entrust Halliburton with insuring safe food in the US. And due to budget over-runs will will even pay them... more money!

@NoExpirationDate_GitEmSteveDave: Kind of late in the game, though. And there are many processors that slog thru the fiasco. Most importantly, no execs faced jail time. Finally, the companies further down the food chain that only rely on the lowest bid, and not quality, skate.
If corporate immolation was more assured, it'd have a stronger impact to companies considering saving a few dimes today even if it means rolling the dice next year.

@MooseOfReason: We did that with the shadow banking system. Completely unregulated and self-funding.
Worked pretty damned awesomely, huh?

@savdavid: Keeping pace with inflation wasn't a train wreck, and increases in their budget was *exactly* the hell Bush did.

[www.usatoday.com]

Facts, please.

@Derek R Borden: So you'd rather shoot the messenger and ignore the message then acquiesce that maybe, just maybe, a stopped watch is right at least twice a day?

How painfully forward thinking of you.

Basically government agencies exist so they can maintain their current level of funding or obtain more funding all while providing jobs with benefits to people not smart enough to get real jobs. If the agency looks like they can solve a political problem, such as food safety or terrorism or the crisis du jour, that is a win for the agency and for the politicians who can say they favored increasing the funding. However, nothing really changes.

@Trai_Dep: Correlation is not causation.

@Trai_Dep: Monsanto: Food Terrorists!

@morlo: Seriously?

I'm talking about putting the onus on the company to ensure their food meets quality standards.

Underwriters Laboratories has their UL mark on many products.

[www.ul.com]

Think about it. If UL screwed up how the FDA did with e.coli-tainted spinach or hamburger meat, they would lose serious credibility, as well as clients who have the mark on their product. We still count on the FDA for food safety.

It isn't working.

@Trai_Dep: There's no entity inflating the food supply with artificially cheap cheese.

The Federal Reserve caused this crisis, just like the great depression.

Typical Democrats! They have no *real* solutions except to disparage their opponents, but surely if they throw enough cash (printing it as fast as the BEP can do it) at the problem, that will fix it.

All we need are empty buzzwords like "hope" and "change" and that will fix the problem.

@S-the-K: You forgot they also use a good helping of Newspeak with the empty buzzwords.

@NoExpirationDate_GitEmSteveDave: OK. That phrase is thrown out by laymen an awful lot, some well meaning and other willfully ignorant. But knowledgeable people only use that phrase when they have a better causal factor.
So your candidate is...?

@MooseOfReason: Funny enough, there IS an entity inflating the food supply with artificially cheap cheese. They're called farm price supports. Look it up.
And so long as we're on the topic of looking things up, care to provide reputable cites saying the Fed caused the Depression? Because outside of the wingnut blogs, the vast majority of reputable economists & historians disagree.

@I Love New Jersey: They learned from the past eight years. Anyone would pick up on how to do it, and most members of Congress are lawyers, so they already know a bit about manipulating language.

@NoExpirationDate_GitEmSteveDave: Unless it is. Did we have epidemic levels of diabetes/obesity/etc. 30 years ago? Did we have a large amount of processed foods 30 years ago? The answers are no and no. Do we have both today? Yes and yes. As Trai said: can you name a better candidate? Why do YOU think that diabetes rates are at an all time high in America today?

It takes more to be a skilled debater than having read a wikipedia page of logical fallacies.

@Trai_Dep: Ehh? How do you define reputable? My best definition of reputable is whether they were able to predict it in the first place. If someone couldn't see the housing crisis coming in 2006 (which most "reputable" economists couldn't), then their opinion doesn't hold a lot of weight. All of the "wingnut bloggers" who blamed the Fed were able to predict the severity of the crisis all the way back to 2004 and before. The wall street chicanery played a fundamental part, sure - but without the "cheap money" fuel the Fed poured on the fire, it never would have gotten to the scale that it did.

@morlo: We're talking about competing. Halliburton is a company that receives 100% of it's revenue from the Federal Government - they are not competing, they are being hired.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the idea of "privatization" - privatization does not mean giving a sole monopoly to some politically connected company. That is the worst of all possible worlds, the Halliburton model, it breeds rampant corruption. True privatization means stepping out of the way entirely and letting the people decide which services they want with their pocket books. Like with police departments - abolish all of them, and let private firms compete on the grounds of who can provide the most safety, least brutatlity, etc., with local votes every year. As it is, if the police are awful, you can't "fire" the beat cops.

What's the greater public health menace - salmonella that sickens thousands a year, or junk food that sickens millions, many chronically? Hmmm, I'm gonna go think about that one while you guys pour another few billion dollars down the rat hole.

@NoExpirationDate_GitEmSteveDave: Oh, how kind of them, our benevolent overlords in their eternal mercy decided to not push thousands of hard working small business owners into the economic blast furnace. How could we have ever questioned their infinite mercy. Remind me to light a candle for them next time I do my prayers.

I would have been reading www.Consumerist.com on January 8th, 2009 except I was busy..you know, outside, breathing air, backpacking through some mountains, living.