Baylen Linnekin: The Feds ‘Modernize’ Food Safety Without Making Food Safer

Can
the federal government spend hundreds of millions of dollars on
food-safety regulations without making Americans or our food much
safer? Sadly, the answer appears to be yes, writes Baylen
Linnekin.

In late September, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
released two key sets of revised rules intended to implement the
Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the federal food-safety law
passed in 2011.

The FSMA, widely billed as the most important update of the
nation’s food-safety regulations in 75 years, is intended, as the
FDA puts it, “to
ensure the U.S. food supply is safe by shifting the focus from
responding to contamination to preventing it.”

In hyping the FSMA, the FDA referred
to food-borne illness as “a significant public health
burden that is largely preventable.” The former is true. The latter
may be true. But it’s also true that the proposed revised FSMA
regulations have little to do with preventing food-borne illness,
according to Linnekin.

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