Yesterday brought news of a new food safety rule:
All companies that manufacture, process or distribute food for people or animals to eat must now report any problems that could lead to food-borne illness within 24 hours, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday.
Notification must be made using the online Reportable Food Registry, which was mandated by Congress two years ago in the hope of speeding up the process of alerting the FDA of contaminated foods and cutting down on the distribution of such food.
Here's the bit about this from the FDA website. According to the press release, this was announced by the FDA in June and a comment period followed.
Meanwhile, both HHS and the USDA (the FDA is under HHS) jointly announced a new food safety website, which they have brilliantly named FoodSafety.gov. From the press release:
Consumers can sign up in one easy place to receive email and RSS alerts on recalled or potentially unsafe food and hear from the top scientific experts across the government on food safety. Later phases of the site to be launched will include recall feeds for texting and mobile phones. The site will also feature a foodsafety.gov widget that the public and the media are encouraged to download and promote on their Web sites and social networking sites. The widget will instantly update viewers with the latest food safety recalls and will be a valuable public health and safety tool.
I hate to say it, but I think we have Michael Taylor (the FDA's Food Safety Czar and Monsanto's former lobbyist) to thank for this. |
