A New Threat to Food Safety

In an interesting and alarming piece, a columnist at the Washington Examiner looks at a threat to food safety that we don’t often think of: terrorism.

The Government Accountability Office recently released a report addressing the challenges of overseeing the import of food, especially the possibility of a deliberately introduced food-borne pathogen.

We are quickly learning that as the amount of imported food American consume increases, so does the risk of contamination – for example, the Salmonella outbreak in 2008 was linked to jalapenos grown in Mexico and distributed in the United States.

While legislation granting the Food and Drug Administration new powers to regulate imported foods is currently enjoying bipartisan support in Congress, and will hopefully help prevent food-borne illness, there has been little discussion of improving food safety from outside, intentional threats.