HILLARY - Govt should do more to protect food supply

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Clinton: Government should do more to protect the food supply

By WILLIAM KATES Associated Press Writer

November 19, 2001, 4:02 PM EST

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Americans are right to expect the government to do more to protect the nation's food supply, U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday at a town hall meeting at Cornell University.

"We have to be aware of the possibility that our food supply right now is much too vulnerable," Clinton told 300 people at Cornell's Barnes Hall.

"It is an issue that has been around for years ... but nobody before made it a top priority. Right now, there has got to be change," she said.

Food safety was the primary focus Monday as New York's junior senator held the fourth in a series of town hall-style meetings related to the Sept. 11 attacks. She hosted previous forums in Brooklyn, Rochester and Syracuse.

"We know terrorists have taken advantage of our interdependent systems like air travel and the postal network. Clearly, the same is true with our highly centralized food supply," Clinton said to an audience made up of students and invited local health and emergency services personnel, elected officials and faculty experts.

"A terrorist need only introduce a pathogen at one point in the process and our highly mechanized and efficient production and distribution practices can spread that contaminated product ... around the world," she said.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, approximately 76 million Americans suffer food-related gastrointestinal illnesses each year, said Kathryn J. Boor, a Cornell food scientist who took part in the panel discussion. An average of 5,000 die, she said.

"These numbers are estimates because few people call their doctor up to say they vomited up dinner," Boor said. "Even so, that's one in three Americans. You can see the potential for trouble."

Boor said the government should more stringently scrutinize the entire food production process, "from farm to fork."

Clinton told her audience that "it makes no sense" how the federal government presently operates, splitting responsibility for food safety between the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.

Much like the government has created a Homeland Defense department to coordinate domestic national security, the country needs one agency to oversee food safety, Clinton said.

The USDA regulates meat and poultry while the FDA is responsible for seafood, fruit, vegetables and other foods, she said.

In October, Clinton joined other lawmakers to introduce legislation intended to strengthen the security of America's food supply and protect it from contamination through a nearly $500 million assistance package.

Although the USDA has a smaller volume of food product to regulate, it has more inspectors than the FDA. The proposal would not only add inspectors, it would give immediate recall and detention authority to the FDA so it could quickly stop contaminated food from spreading--a power only the USDA presently has, she said.

The proposal also provide more resources to the FDA so it could increase inspections of food imports. The FDA inspects less than 1 percent of all imports annually and uses only 700 inspectors to oversee food imports and investigate 57,000 sites.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

Answers

JMHO, the government should do more to protect us from Hillary.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

Snort!

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

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