All Your Eggs in One Casket 0
In a story which looks into the background of the egg saladmonella story (follow the link to read it–it finds a common ingredient in all the different salads), appears this line:
“You have to wonder where the USDA and FDA inspectors were.”
Paul Waldman answers the question, citing this article from 2007–they fell victim to the Republican campaign against “the dead hand of regulation.”
- There are 12 percent fewer FDA employees in field offices who concentrate on food issues.
- Safety tests for U.S.-produced food have dropped nearly 75 percent, from 9,748 in 2003 to 2,455 last year, according to the agency’s own statistics.
- After the Sept. 11 attacks, the FDA, at the urging of Congress, increased the number of food inspectors and inspections amid fears that the nation’s food system was vulnerable to terrorists. Inspectors and inspections spiked in 2003, but now both have fallen enough to erase the gains. “The only difference is now it’s worse, because there are more inspections to do — more facilities — and more food coming into America, which requires more inspections,” said Tommy Thompson, who as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services pushed to increase the numbers.
Because, as Republicans tell us, regulations are unnecessary overhead because no business person would ever do anything improper.
I have to go now. Pigasus, my flying pig, is ready to take off for his daily flight to Washington via Richmond.
