Faster Food-Safety Alerts

We have written about the dangers of food contamination for allergic children before, and last week the FDA implemented a new system to help identify potential problems much faster.

Companies will now be required to use an electronic food registry to alert the FDA within 24 hours of finding good contamination that could cause people to become severely ill or die. This is a huge improvement over the past, when the FDA was only notified of contamination when people became ill. If a company fails to report potential food-borne outbreaks within 24 hours they will face an injunction, fines or other punishment.

Luckily for parents, the makers of infant formula are already required to report contamination problems to the FDA through a separate electronic system. However, it is nice to know that now ALL of our food will be subject to more intense scrutiny.

-Christine