Food safety lawyer warns federal cuts are dismantling outbreak detection systems
By
Bill Marler
A good honest bake. Not flashy, but you'll finish the whole bagel.
Summary
A food safety lawyer with over 30 years of experience representing victims of foodborne illness outbreaks warns that the current administration's cuts to the FDA, CDC, and USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service are dismantling the systems that detect and prevent foodborne outbreaks. The article argues that by firing, defunding, and disbanding the personnel who investigate outbreaks, the federal government is failing in its duty to protect the public, while pathogens continue to pose a threat regardless of political decisions.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledI built a career holding companies accountable when the food safety system failed. I never imagined the federal government itself would become one of the things that fails.
The people who find foodborne outbreaks are being fired, defunded, and disbanded — and the bugs do not care.
For more than thirty years I have represented the families on the other end of a foodborne outbreak — the parents of children on dialysis with hemolytic uremic syndrome, the survivors of a contaminated hamburger or a bag of spinach, the people left planning funerals.
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