Sources of Food Poisoning (Health)

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This is out of today's paper:

Although much of the fear surrounding food safety focuses on meat and poultry, especially beef, the General Accounting Office estimates 85% of food poisoning comes from the fruits, vegetables, seafood and cheeses which are regulated by the FDA and claim a larger share of the American diet each year.

Still, the FDA has less than a tenth of the inspectors of the Department of Agriculture, which regulates the meat and poultry industry. So while USDA inspectors examine meat before it gets to grocery freezers, the FDA must increasingly rely on the companies it regulates to keep their factories clean and their products safe.

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It seems a like a couple of years ago there was an effort to merge the food inspection aspects of the USDA and FDA into a single agency, but to my knowledge nothing came of it.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), March 18, 2001

Answers

In a local Meat Packing plant where they mostly just do farm animals for local people. They have a USDA inspector that sits in his office and reads news papers, surfs the internet, and looks to see how his estocks are doing. I have never seen him inspect anything he is always sittin in his office. Makes you wander. 15 Years ago i used to drive a truck over the road and would haul beef to the east coast out of TX and some of the meat packing plants i went to were so dirty and nasty that i almost considered being a vegatarian. dale

-- dale (dgarr@fidnet.com), March 18, 2001.

Nothing that is federally inspected is safe anyway... That's why I grow my own. No chemical herbicides, pesticides, etc. Nobody I don't know handling it - let alone the zillions of people between the farmer, packager, shipper, stocker, shoppers.... Our mothers used to talk about catching stuff from toilet seats.... What do you suppose you can catch from anything you find in the grocery store?????

-- Sue Diederich (willow666@rocketmail.com), March 20, 2001.

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