Letter to the Editor: We do not require a turmoil of USDA and FDA to make a single food security system

Dear Editor:

This letter remains in recommendation to a current Letter from the Editor in Food Safety News (“An independent food security board is far much better than anything FDA Commissioner does on his own”), outdated January 29, 2023. As some might keep in mind, I had the fantastic benefit of working as Undersecretary for Food Safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 2001 to 2004. Throughout that time, we dealt with a number of foodborne health problem occasions and meat remembers due to contamination with E. coli O157: H7 (hamburger patties) and Listeria monocytogenes (ready-to-eat cold cuts), to name a few. To resolve these and other problems, we concentrated on guaranteeing that our inspectors were well trained in the science of the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points system (HACCP), forming groups of auditors to guarantee that strategies were not just in result at meat processing plants, however that they had actually been established in a science-based way. We made sure that all policies we would release would be based strictly on science and proof, not speculation. As an outcome of our activities, the rate of contamination of ready-to-eat meat and poultry with L. monocytogenes dropped from 0.64% in 2005 to 0.33% in 2017 (Mamber, S.W., et al, 2020 J. Food Prot. 83( 9 ):1598 -1606), and diseases due to E. coli O157: H7 reduced by 42%, reaching the CDC’s Healthy People 2010 Goals for foodborne health problems due to this organism ahead of schedule (cdc.gov/ mmwr, April 15, 2010).

Throughout that time, there had actually been calls from different groups prompting the development of a single food security company, to consist of both the Food Safety Inspection Service (