Food Safety Happenings at the White House

What do you think of President Obama’s recent appointment of Dr. Peggy Hamburg as the new head of the FDA? Watch President Obama’s address on this and his perspective on the problems with the safety of our food supply.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/03/14/Food-Safety/

Here are the key points President Obama made:

• Average number of outbreaks from contaminated produce are up to 350 per year from 100 a year in the early 1900s


• Laws and regulations governing food safety have not been updated since they were written in the time of Teddy Roosevelt


• The FDA is significantly under-funded and under-staffed, with currently only 7,000 out of 150,000 plants and warehouses being inspected each year (roughly 5%)


• President Obama is proposing a $1 billion investment in food safety and the updating of laws and regulations, along with Dr. Hamburg to drive more cooperation between regulatory agencies