You are what you eat: sick and dead (The Exclusive Blog at Panzo.org)

FDA knew for years of potential problems with spinach, peanut butter

The Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut-butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show.

Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, according to agency documents.

"We have 60,000 to 80,000 facilities that we're responsible for in any given year," Brackett said. Explosive growth in the number of processors and the amount of imported foods means manufacturers "have to build safety into their products rather than us chasing after them," Brackett said.

"We have to get out of the 1950s paradigm."

Having the food industry police itself is a nice, Conservative anti-regulatory ideal. Unfortunately, as we see, some manufacturers would rather make a buck and take their chances than ensure the safety of their products.

As the recent deaths of pets probably caused by contaminated Chinese glutens shows, Americans need to wake up to the fact that we no longer have any control over what goes into our food when we buy processed products from the Mega-Ag companies.

Eat in season, eat locally grown food and eat less processed food.

Now, back to your Fritos and Cheez-Whiz.