Watch what you eat!

The House finally passed legislation to give the Food and Drug Administration(FDA) the resources and the authority needed to prevent food born illnesses. After a year of many food born illnesses in products like hot peppers, spinach, olives, and of course the salmonella in peanut butter. Due to this outbreak of food born illnesses President Obama ordered a review of the FDA in order to prevent similar events from happening. This new House bill requires the FDA to make much needed, more frequent inspections, and give them the authority to require company's keep certain records in order to better trace contaminated foods. Though it seems ridiculous, the FDA currently make such records mandatory, thus the FDA basically "suggests" food and drug safety, while the company's choose whether or not to follow them. It is very important that a government agency that controls much of the health and safety of our people has the power and resources to do its job. Though this bill will most likely not pass in the Senate for another year the FDA has already put many new plans in action. For one, they hired a food-safety specialist, Michael Taylor to focus on issues of food born illnesses. They have also begun to train food inspectors to be more detailed with these more frequent checks. I think there is great importance in inspecting our food, however the House claims it will cost 2.2 billion dollars over five years to put the bill in place. So, we have to ask ourselves, how much money are we willing to spend on the safety of what we consume?