What? Food safety??? Doesn't Barack Obama know he's only supposed to do ONE thing at a time? Imagine a president taking seriously the issue of food safety. That people in the U.S. were dying because of tainted food never seemed to bother George Bush. But, leave it to Obama to think he has to act on this major problem. What's he trying to do? Be a competent leader? This should throw the Republicans and the talking heads into a frenzy. Obama is doing something else!!! How dare he.
Here's the video:
Here's an excerpt:
But in recent years, we’ve seen a number of problems with the food making its way to our kitchen tables. In 2006, it was contaminated spinach. In 2008, it was salmonella in peppers and possibly tomatoes. And just this year, bad peanut products led to hundreds of illnesses and cost nine people their lives – a painful reminder of how tragic the consequences can be when food producers act irresponsibly and government is unable to do its job. Worse, these incidents reflect a troubling trend that’s seen the average number of outbreaks from contaminated produce and other foods grow to nearly 350 a year – up from 100 a year in the early 1990s.As I mentioned last week, one reason we post the weekly addresses is so people can watch and hear the president in an unfiltered way. Sure, Obama injects his own spin into them. But, this way, you can hear the message directly from him, instead of through the interpretation of the traditional media. This week, the theme adopted by the pundits and D.C. reporters, spurred on by Republicans, was that Obama has been taking on too much, working on too many issues. That, of course, means they're ignoring the colossal failures of the past eight years -- and many of those same talking heads enabled Bush and ignored his failings. So, watch for yourself. We don't need the corporate gatekeepers to tell us food safety isn't an important issue. Obama is doing his job.
Part of the reason is that many of the laws and regulations governing food safety in America have not been updated since they were written in the time of Teddy Roosevelt. It’s also because our system of inspection and enforcement is spread out so widely among so many people that it’s difficult for different parts of our government to share information, work together, and solve problems. And it’s also because the FDA has been underfunded and understaffed in recent years, leaving the agency with the resources to inspect just 7,000 of our 150,000 food processing plants and warehouses each year. That means roughly 95% of them go uninspected.
That is a hazard to public health. It is unacceptable. And it will change under the leadership of Dr. Margaret Hamburg, whom I am appointing today as Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
