Food Safety: Safer Food Saves Lives, Suffering and Health Care Costs

Savings under Health Reform involve more than making health care more available, affordable/ accessible, and competent. One way to save money is to protect Americans  from everyday hazards that make them sick - including our food.

We are sickened by our food. The CDC estimates that foodborne diseases "...cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year. Known pathogens account for an estimated 14 million illnesses, 60,000 hospitalizations, and 1,800 deaths."   While unsafe manufacturers and food handling processors profit from their carelessness, Americans of all ages suffer and die. The public shoulders the considerable cost shift from dangerous operators in the food industry to America's families..

The Obama administration has begun the process of safeguarding our families by modernizing our  food safety laws, taking steps to implement hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls, establish safety and performance standards, provide for safe transportation of our food, provide for safe importing of food from abroad, update government's ability to recall suspect food products, and taking other overdue major steps.

Protecting our families by protecting and safeguarding our food supply makes good sense.  Protecting outr health care budget by protecting and safeguarding our food supply makes good sense, too    Let's be sure that our Congressmen and Congresswomen don't through up roadblocks to this important change.