Flash in the Pan

According to a Washington Post story, the Food and Drug Administration actually knew about the problems at a peanut butter plant and spinach farms that led to some deaths and many illnesses.

Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, according to agency documents.

Apparently FDA officials are saying that there was nothing they could have done. Well, other than sit on their backsides, but it appears that they already did that.

The outbreaks point to a need to change the way the agency does business, said Robert E. Brackett, director of the FDA's food-safety arm, which is responsible for safeguarding 80 percent of the nation's food supply.

"We have 60,000 to 80,000 facilities that we're responsible for in any given year," Brackett said. Explosive growth in the number of processors and the amount of imported foods means that manufacturers "have to build safety into their products rather than us chasing after them," Brackett said. "We have to get out of the 1950s paradigm."

Now just what paradigm is that? That someone has to make sure that food manufacturers do adequate jobs in keeping such things from happening? And all this time I thought that's what the agency was supposed to do.

Labels: FDA, food, food safety