New Approaches on Energy and the Environment

CHAPTER

16

Modernizing the Food Safety System

by Michael R. Taylor

Fundamental reform of the nation’s essential yet tradition-bound food safety program requires presidential leadership. Mr. President, I recommend that you organize a bipartisan effort to design the food safety system of the future and implement it in a way that builds on current strengths but prepares the system for future success. While the U.S. food safety system has many strengths, over the century plus of its existence it has become organizationally fragmented, bound by obsolete statutes, and unable to make the best use of its scarce resources to protect the safety and security of the American food supply. To meet the persistent challenge of foodborne illness and the new challenges ...