Our food safety system has been improved for 100 years.  We still have problems, but domestic food is certainly the safest in the world.

But trade trumps all.  So we shred our food safety net by importing gargantuan quantities of food from other countries with low standards and we don't inspect 98% of it.

The Asian food import safety problems prompted Senator Durbin, Senator Brown and Representative Rosa DeLauro to propose fixes.  The Bush Administration, seeing a problem to the trade agenda, preempted them with its own plan.  

This response may sum up the initial views:

“My first reaction is, there are some really good things in it,” said Carol Tucker Foreman, food policy fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, a watchdog group in Washington. But she added, “Where’s the money, and what will the final regulations look like after the Congress and the media have moved on to other issues?”

The Administration's fact sheet on the plan is here. 

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