Carol L. Tucker-Foreman Testimony On Food Safety Before the Committee on Agriculture, U.S. House of Representatives

There has been limited progress in reducing the foodborne disease because the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), which governs the safety of over 80 percent of the food we consume, was designed to address problems prevalent at the beginning and middle of the last century and hasn’t been amended to keep up with changes that have altered the way we live and eat today. In 1906 the primary food safety danger arose from companies adding dangerous chemicals to meat to mask decay and substituting cheap ingredients to defraud consumers. The FDCA provisions don’t adequately address the most pressing current food safety problem, protecting consumers from illness caused by food contaminated with disease-causing bacteria.