From The Guardian UK
By Phoebe Connelly

In the past two months, pistachios, cheese and spinach have all been recalled from US stores due to concerns about contamination. At least 1,500 Americas fell ill after eating frozen pies contaminated with salmonella in 2007. Why are foods that we once assumed to be safe making us sick?

As our food system has been consolidated into the hands of large manufacturers, it has become nearly impossible for producers, much less consumers and regulators, to trace foods’ origins and spot bad practices. At the same time, US food regulation has remained stuck in an earlier era – designed for a largely domestic, local food system that has been supplanted by a global, corporate-run one – and the agencies charged with monitoring food safety have been understaffed and underfunded.

Currently, the US food and drug administration oversees regulation of all domestic and imported food, with the exception of meat, poultry and eggs, which fall under the purview of the department of agriculture. The Environmental Protection Agency also plays a role, establishing the regulations for acceptable pesticide residue levels in food.

These agencies have suffered years of neglect. A 2008 FDA report found gaps in the agency’s scientific and technological development that were due in part to two decades of chronic underfunding. During the Bush administration, “the number of people working in the field on food inspection and testing did not rise in response to the rapid rise in food imports,” says Elanor Starmer, an analyst at the consumer advocacy group Food and Water Watch, who also blogs at Ethicurean. In 2000 there were 1,556 inspectors, which rose to 2,126 in 2003 before falling again to a 1,940 in 2007. Contrast this with the almost doubling of the amount of produce imported into the US over that period.

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