Comments:Obama calls food safety system a 'public health hazard'

I have an idea, how about hiring a person in each city for town to report to one or two person in each county, who will report to a person in charge of two or three people who represent a few counties. You know that this is a way to both add to work and yet find out information for the health board with a minimal cost. These people would probably be more than willing to help make our life a little saver. I mean let us face the fact it is cheaper to not care for human life that to make it safe from others.

Hope is Gone
A sad day… my hope that President Obama and his administration would bring true change have been dashed. This is more of the old-school, failed “throw resources (mostly money) at the problem” rather than anything new.

The FDA is too broken and itself a big part of the problem (see Life Extension Foundation: The FDA Indicts Itself for one discussion of this point). Breaking up the FDA monopoly on health and safety regulation might be one avenue to a safer, healthier America. The U.S. has long had private companies such as Underwriters’ Laboratories and others inspecting appliances, materials, and more for fire and electrical safety, and that seems to be working out well. It is an open system: UL has no monopoly on these inspections, and there are a few alternatives. For example the City of Los Angeles has, or used to, run its own approval process. If UL or another approval agency fails to meet public safety goals, other approval organizations can enter the “marketplace” for inspections to fill the gap. No such option with the FDA: it is a monopoly. We will likely remain unsafe until such time as this changes.

Sonic Purity (talk) 17:51, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Good start
I'm hopeful that the administration recognized the problem and wants to address it. They have to look deeper than just number of inspectors, though. I don't think it is realistic for the Federal government to inspect food processing locations for the entire country, and they have to enable local governments to conduct routine inspections and know that they can call on the Feds for "back-up". The Federal agency needs to have increased power (right now some of the limited resources inspectors are given due to law is mind boggling) and state-of-the-art tools that they can bring to the table for prosecution, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.41.216.178 (talk) 18:08, 15 March 2009 (UTC)