Obama joins calls for improving US food safety regime

February 3, 2009
by Maryn McKenna
CIDRAP News

President Barack Obama called today for a "complete review" of the operations of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the wake of the ongoing outbreak of Salmonella in peanuts and peanut butter.

"The disruption of moving to a government-wide single food safety agency, in a very short period of time, may actually weaken things for a while rather than strengthen them," Dr. Jeffrey Levi, executive director of TFAH, said in an interview. "So our hope is that the first step in the process is creating a separate food safety agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to strengthen systems that are already in place."

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