For-profit inspectors allow toxic food

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 10:39:00 +0000

According to an investigation from Bloomberg Markets magazine released Thursday, the growing privatization of food inspection has led to severe failures in oversight and has caused millions of Americans to fall sick.

Bloomberg Markets reports:

During the past two decades, the food industry has taken over much of the FDA’s role in ensuring that what Americans eat is safe. The agency can’t come close to vetting its jurisdiction of $1.2 trillion in annual food sales. In 2011, the FDA inspected 6 percent of domestic food producers and just 0.4 percent of importers.

The FDA has had no rules for how often food producers must be inspected. The food industry hires for-profit in- spection companies—known as third- party auditors—who aren’t required by law to meet any federal standards and have no government supervision. Some of these monitors choose to follow guidelines from trade groups that in- clude ConAgra Foods Inc., Kraft Foods Inc. and Wal-Mart. The private inspec- tors that companies select often check only those areas their clients ask them to review. That means they can miss deadly pathogens lurking in places they never examined.

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For-profit inspectors allow toxic food