By Ron Nixon
The new food safety law gave FDA more power but no additional funds. Congress did not provide enough funds to do so. Over the past five years, there have been more than 30 food poisoning outbreaks. Because of the decline in the budget, only the exporting countries that had past food safety problems would be inspected. Some officials wanted to eliminate border inspections because; there were times when imported meat shipments were placed next to toxic chemicals. FDA is unable to inspect all the food that would come into the country, giving the responsibility to foreign companies to hired private inspectors and conduct food safety checks. In a year, FDA is only able to inspect 2-3% of the 10 million plus shipments of imported goods because of a tight budget.
-Ying Liu
One Response to Foreign Food Inspections on Decline as Illnesses From Imported Goods Rise