The Role of the Government in FSIS and FDA The government plays multiple important roles in the way that our country functions as a whole in its economy. One of the most important roles that the government has is the responsibility of regulating food and drugs to make sure that it is safe for the public to consume. The two common agencies that the government monitors are the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Food Safety and Inspection Service is a public health agency that consists of inspecting poultry, eggs, and meat to make sure that they are packaged in a wholesome way, safe to consume, and labeled correctly for its consumers. On the other hand, the Food and Drug Administration monitors …show more content…
During time between January 1, 2009 through December 31, 2010, public health departments reported 1,527 foodborne disease outbreaks, which resulted in 29,444 cases of illness, 1,184 hospitalizations, and 23 deaths. Norovirus was the most commonly reported infection found out of 790 outbreaks of illnesses, which was about 42% of outbreaks. The second most reported infection was Salmonella, consisting of 30% of outbreaks. Unfortunately, 1,184 (4%) resulted in hospitalization out off the 29,444 outbreak-related illnesses. It is very frightening that salmonella caused the most outbreak-related hospitalizations (49%), because people do not take this sickness as serious and highly into consideration as they should, especially when it comes to eating raw food such as cookie dough. Next, salmonella was followed by Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (16%), and norovirus (9%). Outbreaks caused by some pathogens were particularly severe. From 2009-2010, 48% were caused by food consumed in a restaurant or deli and 21% by food consumed in a private home. (Centers for Disease Control and …show more content…
The public has a strong sense of trust when it comes to what food is being produced and brought into our country, but unfortunately the trust can easily be broken if there is an outbreak of any sort of disease coming from food that was not properly inspected. The government can improve food inspection conditions by hiring more inspectors at the food warehouses to ensure that more awareness is being given to products to lessen the chance of missing contaminated ones. Secondly, the government should change the law that FDA needs to inspect food conditions overseas to more than just once every ten years. Once the government permits stricter control over how frequent there are food inspections, the statistics of diseases coming from contaminated food will hopefully shrink and people will develop a stronger trust in its