U.S. Food Safety: Home-Grown Probl...(production in California so you have vin...),Health

And problems can also arise after the produce has left the field. Today, it's more likely that one huge agri-business ships its product to processors who bag it under different labels and then distribute it to every state in the union.

The whole food production system has grown increasingly concentrated, overwhelmingly complex, and -- paradoxically -- at times fragmented.

At the same time, critics charge, U.S. government oversight is not adequate.

"Our real issue here comes down to appropriate oversight and regulation by our government agencies," said Mickey Parish, chairman of the department of nutrition and food science and acting chairman of the Center for Food Systems Security at the University of Maryland. "They have been cut back so severely in the last six to eight years that, quite frankly, it is more difficult to do the proper inspections that need to be done to ensure that the food is absolutely as safe as it possibly can be."

Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are charged with keeping the country's food supply safe. Yet the division of labor, and funding, between the two agencies shows where some of the problem may lie: The FDA receives 20 percent of the food safety budget, yet is responsible for 80 percent of the burden, while the USDA gets 80 percent of the budget for 20 percent of the responsibility. The USDA handles meat, poultry and certain egg products. The FDA handles everything else.

On top of that, according to Parish and Hansen, the FDA has about one-tenth of the number of inspectors as the USDA does and has actually reduced the number of produce inspectors it employs.

Some estimates suggest there are 12 percent fewer FDA employees in field off
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