Regulation
An Environment of Heightened Regulation
Global food safety is an immediate, significant, and growing problem. It also is a largely preventable problem. Each year in the United States alone, about 48 million people (1 in 6 Americans) get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne illnesses.
In recent years, a significant number of high-profile outbreaks of foodborne illness in the United States has heightened awareness among the American public. In fact, according to a public opinion poll commissioned by The Pew Charitable Trusts, 58% of voters in the United States are worried about bacterial contamination of the food supply—with about a third of them saying that they worry “a great deal.”
In response to the public’s concerns—and spurred by the rash of food product recalls and outbreaks of foodborne illnesses in recent years—the U.S. Congress passed The Food Safety Modernization Act (signed by President Obama in January 2011) that requires higher food safety standards for foods grown and processed domestically and for imported foods.
