After taking office, US President Barack Obama has taken up a different direction on food safety. He demeaned the earlier food safety system of the USA which was decades-old and not suitable for our modern times. To him, the old safety system was hazardous for the health of the public and thus, needed a complete overhauling. He started with the modernization of the safety standards by appointing a new chief for the US Federal Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Margaret Hamburg.
The direction taken by President Barack Obama is completely different from the earlier food safety measures given in the article. Earlier restaurants did not bother to check whether the meat given in hamburgers had become stale or not. Due to this a lot of people had to suffer from Escherichia coli which is very harmful to humans and can even result in their death. Meat providers even used downer cattle as a supple of meat even though they were sick and has a high chance of getting mad cow disease. President Barack Obama has already announced that slaughtering of downer cattle for food supply will be banned and the cattle to be used will have to undergo special veterinary inspections. (Schlosser, 331-338)
President Barack Obama’s new directions regarding the safety of people are different than the ones discussed in this chapter because earlier USA’s food safety system was too dispersed making it extremely difficult for the health inspectors to share information among themselves or help each other in solving problems. But now he has created the Food Safety Working Group so that the food safety laws can be coordinated and he can obtain advice from the government regarding the various updates on food safety. Also, earlier when the American population suffered from food poisoning incidences, no one made any reports and no diagnoses were carried out. But with the advancements of medical sciences today and President Barack Obama’s Food Safety Working Group, reporting and diagnoses has been made very easy to carry out and keep track of. This department has also been created so that the food safety laws that were created during the term of President Theodore Roosevelt, but which were never implemented, could be properly enforced and coordinated throughout the government so as to safeguard the common people from deadly diseases.
Another difference between President Barack Obama’s direction and those given in the article is that earlier the federal departments responsible for upholding the food safety system of the USA were complexly under-funded and understaffed due to which they were left unable to annually inspect the warehouses and food processing plants all over the country. But under President Barack Obama’s leadership, all of these have changed since he had put the welfare and safety of the public’s health in front of all other issues. Earlier students were even provided ground beef, whose quality was highly questionable, in their school cafeterias. Since they were purchased very cheaply, they were almost always contaminated. (Nestle, 225)
However, after President Barack Obama established the Food Safety Working Group, each and every meat producing and packaging company was finely scrutinized to see if they followed all the rules and regulations. He no longer wanted parents to worry about the food that their children consume. Under him, even the meat packaging industry of the USA has had to follow standards that were based on performances.
Works Cited:
Nestle, Marion. Food politics: how the food industry influences nutrition and health. LA: University of California Press, 2009.
Schlosser, Eric. “What’s in the Meat”. Fast Food Nation: What the All-American Meal Is Doing to the World. NY: Penguin Books Limited, 2008. 331-338.