That's a very good question: Why isn'tour food safe?  Could it be because the food industry hires for-profit inspection companies--known as third party auditors who aren't even required by law to meet any federal standards and have no government supervision? I read that some of these monitors choose to follow guidelines not from the FDA but from trade groups that include Con-Agra Foods, Kraft Foods, and Wal-Mart.  

In a special report, Bloomberg Markets broke the story last week about paid food safety auditors that are basically paid to look the other way when inspecting food processing facilities.   Every day, people are dying from unsafe practices while auditors are awarding gold stars to the people who are paying them.

According to the Bloomberg article, the FDA, who is charged with the safety of our food supply, inspects only 6% of the food production facilities in the country every year.  According to the CDC, over 3000 people per year die because of unsafe food production.

Over the past few years outbreaks of deadly illnesses like salmonella and listeria have affected peanut butter, cantaloupe, eggs, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce and carrots, all items that we shoppers have been placing into our shopping carts for years.  However rather than working tirelessly to discover the roots of the outbreaks and stopping them the FDA, it seems, is more interested in harassing providers of raw milk, family farms and health food stores.

We must all keep in mind the other important function of the FDA: that is aiding their friends at Monsanto the good folks that brought you GMO Foods.  The grocery store roulette game doesn’t end with poor food-handling practices.  You know those gorgeous tomatoes that are the reddest red you’ve ever seen or the strawberries that are the size of your fist?  Two words: Science Project.  And guess who the guinea pigs are?

SPEAKING OF GMO FOODS

They were introduced to the North American food supply in 1994, with the Flavr Savr tomato.  No labeling was done, no research on the long-term effects of this genetically spliced lab creation on the human body was performed – the tomato just appeared in produce sections all across America.  The tomato was soon followed by such an abundance of genetic modification that by 2006 89 % of the planted area of soybeans, 83 % of cotton, and 61 % maize were genetically modified varieties.

How did Monsanto, the main creator of genetically modified “foods”, get past the FDA, that agency of protection of the health of the American people?  It’s easy when you can load the jury with your own people.  Here are just a few connections between Monsanto and the federal government:

• Michael Taylor:  VP of Monsanto –> Deputy Commissioner of the FDA
• Roger Beachy:  Director of the Danforth Plant Science Center (paid for by Monsanto)  –> director of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Elena Kagan:  Obama Solicitor General (when she famously took Monsanto’s side against organic farmers in the Roundup Ready Alfalfa case)  –>US Supreme Court justice.
• Clarence Thomas:  General Counsel for Monsanto  –>US Supreme Court justice.
• Margaret Miller:  Monsanto supervisor  –> Deputy Director of Human Food Safety
  Donald Rumsfield: Board of Directors for Monsanto’s Searle Pharmaceuticals  –> US Secretary of Defense
• Ann Veneman:  Monsanto Board of Directors  –> US Secretary of Agriculture
• Linda Fisher: Assistant Administrator at the EPA –>VP of MonsantoàDeputy Administrator of the EPA
• Dr. Michael A.Friedman: Deputy Commissioner of the FDA –>Senior VP of Monsanto

Just so we’re clear, the label “FDA Approved” now means “The company that produced this product has enough money and clout to allow it to be sold.”