Food safety failures...now it's our turn.

Every time there's a story about food safety in this country, I'm reminded just how easy it is to get tainted food into the consumer stream...we're sort of like China on a small scale. How is it that it takes over five months to find the source of an outbreak? How does a company make a product without any inspection by the FDA?

Clearly, the management of this company knew they were taking a risk and I'm sure they hoped that the problems would either not surface or not be traced back to them. Wrong on both accounts.

The management of this company should be fired immediately-there's no debating the poor choices made by them to save a product that should never have made it to market. The government should not bear the cost of the recall-PCA should bear the FULL cost of the recall. If they're greedy enough to sell a tainted product-now is the time to send a message and shut this place down-put these greedy assholes out of business.

I hate it when companies make irresponsible decisions and people die. I hate it even more when I realize that we're wasting people and money in Iraq, fighting the 21st century version of Vietnam when we should be spending the money to ensure food safety. This should be a basic government competency for its citizens.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, a former head epidemiologist for Minnesota's state health department, said CDC officials were still looking at chicken as a potential source of the outbreak "11 days after Minnesota made the peanut butter announcement."

"And you know what? That is irresponsible," he said.

FDA officials said they moved as fast as they could given the evidence they had. But Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the CDC's food-borne bacterial illness division, agreed the system is overly complicated, prone to delays and underfunded.

"The reality is that we have 50 different states, each with their own authorities, each with their own processes and each with their own budgets," Tauxe said.

Hubbard said the result is "an embarrassment" to a 21st-century nation -- about 5,000 deaths a year from food poisoning, with another 325,000 hospitalized and tens of millions sickened, according to CDC figures.

"We are losing the equivalent of the World Trade Center attacks every eight months to food-borne illness," Hubbard said.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/05/peanut.recall/index.html