A Single Food Safety Agency – It Just Ain’t Going To Happen

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) has reintroduced her legislation to create a single agency for food safety.  Although the FDA is held responsible for the safety of over 80% of this country’s food, the USDA gets more food safety dollars.  The USDA is a departmental juggernaut.  It’s the one that hands out billions of dollars in farm subsidies; it’s the one that supplies the food stamp bucks.  The FDA is a part of the wimpy HHS (Health and Human Services).  What are the chances of a member of Congress from the Midwest taking dollars away from the USDA, the source of the subsidies going to his state’s farmers, and giving them to the FDA, no matter how much good it would do to improve food safety.  It just ain’t going to happen.