Obama Administration Moves To Protect Safety Of Food Imports

by Stuart Shapiro

Announced on Friday:

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday unveiled new rules to combat safety threats in imported foods – an overhaul that represents a sea chance in U.S. treatment of food shipped from other countries.

Draft regulations to be published Monday seek to prevent contaminated foods from entering the country through third-part audits and a new supplier verification program, rather then relying on inspections when products arrive at U.S. ports of entry.

The regulations were drafted in accordance with the Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA). The nation’s largest food safety update in 70 years, FSMA shifts the focus from responding to contamination to preventing it.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.