New FDA Chiefs Stress Science, Better Food Safety

WASHINGTON  — The huge salmonella outbreak from peanut butter represented a failure of the Food and Drug Administration, that agency's new chiefs declared Tuesday — one they hope to fix.

Expect a "modern food-safety system focused on prevention of contamination," FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and her deputy, Joshua Sharfstein, wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Even its defenders acknowledge the FDA — the nation's chief consumer protection agency — is struggling, given increasing responsibilities overseeing ever-more-complex health industries, but not a budget sufficient to do the job. An independent review in 2007 concluded lives were at risk, and morale plummeted as the agency's own scientists charged their safety concerns were dismissed by leaders too cozy with industry.

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Source: Google News