Food Safety Working Group hears 'good is simply not good enough'
A White House Food Safety Working Group Listening Session was held Wednesday that marked "the beginning of a significant and critical process that will fully review the safety of our nation's food supply," according to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack.
In his opening remarks, Vislack outlined several specific challenges that would require imput from the stakeholders present at the session. These included the development of an approach consistent between the FDA and USDA for preventing foodborne illnesses, as well as an active surveillance and response system for foodborne disease outbreaks.
In regards to the latter, Vislack stated, "Our regulatory agencies must actively watch for disease outbreaks and take rapid action to ensure that we have effective and targeted recalls. Such recalls are in the interests of public health and the strength of industry sectors that might otherwise be tarnished by massive recalls."
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who oversees the FDA and the CDC, also briefly mentioned the subject of foodborne outbreaks in her opening remarks, saying, "When outbreaks do occur, we must all respond quickly, both to protect public health and to speed the recovery of affected industries."
Sebelius went on to say, “We have already made good use of new tools to protect and inform the public. When peanut products were recalled, we produced a widget that was placed on more than 20,000 external Web sites and resulted in 9.6 million page views. And as we saw during the H1N1 flu outbreak, communication is critical during any kind of crisis and we will use every tool possible to get the word out."
However, she failed to mention how effective that tool was in protecting public health and speeding the recovery of the peanut industry.
As Vislack stated at the end of his opening remarks, "[W]e need to develop a way to measure our success... Lives are at stake and good is simply not good enough."
Obama wants Sebelius to seek out the science of health
Being that I’m living in the middle of Kansas, I just caught a live broadcast of President Obama announcing his nomination of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius to the head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Media sources emphasize that, as Secretary of HHS, Sebelius would be implementing the president’s plans for health care reform, along with Nancy-Ann DeParle – an American expert on health care issues and Obama’s pick for “Health Reform Czar”.
However, Obama pointed out in his announcement that it’s not all about health insurance; the position is also responsible for the oversight of several agencies that serve as protective forces, including the FDA and the CDC.
The president alluded to changes in that area of the department as well, and noted the importance of science over politics when determining the best approaches to protecting the health of Americans.
Sebelius will have her work cut out for her on many levels, so I hope she holds that mind: Keeping the poop out of food safety policy is a great way to keep poop out of food.
