Not many of us give too much thought to the food we consume on a daily basis. We go to the grocery store and purchase the items we need for our meals, go home to prep the meal, and then we sit down and eat. We are selective in the produce we pick off the shelves to ensure they are ripe but do we give any thought to whether or not it has been handled properly from the fields to the farm to the produce shelves of the stores? The FDA is in charge of overseeing the safety of produce. Under the Food Safety Modernization Act the FDA has special privileges to enforce produce safety. This act is geared to ale sure our produce is free from illnesses such as E.coli and salmonella. The Food Safety Modernization Act does not cover regulations on pesticide uses and genetically engineered crops unfortunately. This act was developed after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. This was done to oversee the handling of the crops at the farm level to avoid an serious national outbreak of deadly viruses via food supply and consumption.
This act is important to me because as a mother I buy a lot of produce for my children. My family does not own a farm so we rely on grocery stores and markets for our food consumption. I have no way of knowing how the produce was handled and processed. The Food Safety Modernization Act ensures my family has a significantly decreased risk in developing a deadly illness. We live in a scary world today. The days when we could trust our neighbors and neighbor counties are gone. With this act, it helps ease some of the anxieties of our food being mishandled on purpose. Although I am sad to see the world come down to this type of enforcement on even the simplest aspects of our lives such as the vegetables on our plates, I am glad acts such as this exist for the well being of my family and other families around the country for generations to come.
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