What is the current situation of food safety in the United States?

Three swords to defend American food safety, US President Barack Obama nominated former New York State Health Commissioner Hamburg as the director of the US Food and Drug Administration. Hamburg is a famous American expert on bioterrorism. She served as deputy minister of health during Clinton's administration. In addition, Health Commissioner Shafstein of Baltimore, Maryland will serve as her deputy. The two of them will work closely together to ensure the safety of American food supply. Obama said that the food safety system in the United States is not only outdated, but also seriously endangers public health and must be completely reformed. Although the peanut butter pollution incident in the United States has seriously affected the confidence of domestic consumers and the credibility of food safety regulators, it is undeniable that the United States is still a relatively complete and sound country in the world. Strict food safety supervision system, recall system and punitive damages system can be said to be the three swords for maintaining food safety in the United States. The food safety supervision system of the Director of the Food and Drug Administration "from farmland to table" The food safety system in the United States consists of complete food supervision laws, multi-level food supervision institutions and external supervision forces, which can supervise all kinds of food from farmland to table. The most important food supervision law in the United States is the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act passed in 1938, which is still in use today and is the basis of later laws and regulations such as the Food Quality Protection Act, the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Egg Products Inspection Act. These laws and regulations provide the guiding principles of food safety and specific operating standards and procedures, so that food quality supervision, disease prevention, accident emergency and other aspects have laws to follow. The food safety regulatory agencies in the United States are divided into three levels: federal, state and regional. At the federal level, the agencies responsible for food safety mainly include the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the Ministry of Health and Human Services, the Food Safety and Inspection Bureau and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Bureau under the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The responsibility of state and regional agencies is to cooperate with federal agencies to implement various laws and regulations and inspect food production and sales points within their jurisdiction. Among these regulatory authorities, the FDA has the widest jurisdiction, covering all foods except meat and poultry. Meat, poultry and related products are under the responsibility of the Food Safety and Inspection Bureau; The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention supervises the investigation and prevention of food-borne diseases; Environmental protection bureau supervises the safety of drinking water and pesticide residues in food; The Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration supervises the sanitary conditions of fish and other seafood. Most of the third-level supervision institutions employ experts in epidemiology, microbiology and food research, and take the form of professionals stationed in food processing plants and farms to conduct all-round supervision from all aspects of raw material collection, production, circulation, sales and after-sales, forming a three-dimensional supervision network covering the whole country. The federal food safety supervision bureau of the United States implements vertical management and implements a "package" management from top to bottom for matters within its jurisdiction. This management method avoids the omission or repetition of each link, and avoids the problem of a link that affects the whole food industry due to inadequate management. However, due to the decentralization of management power, the food safety regulatory agencies in the United States have exposed many disadvantages in recent years, such as inefficient use of resources and lack of necessary coordination between departments, and the call for establishing independent food regulatory agencies has gradually emerged. The recall system is intended to "make up for it". The food recall system in the United States is a remedial measure taken after the food quality is defective, trying to nip the problem in the bud. The United States is the first country in the world to introduce the recall system. The food recall system in the United States started in two situations: first, enterprises learned that the products were defective and took the initiative to withdraw food from the market; The other is that the drug administration and other companies are forced to recall food in an emergency. However, only when infant formula, medical devices and biological products for human use are harmful to human health, the FDA has the right to request a mandatory recall explicitly authorized by law. At present, some members of the U.S. Congress have submitted a bill, suggesting that the FDA be given a broader mandatory recall right, so that it can more actively respond to the new challenges facing American food safety in the era of globalization. Punitive damages severely punish unscrupulous merchants. Since the 20th century, large companies and enterprises in the United States have flourished, and cases of substandard products harming consumers have occurred frequently, as have food enterprises. Compared with consumers, infringing enterprises are very powerful, and compensatory compensation is difficult to curb their behavior of making and selling unqualified or even dangerous products for profit. In this case, punitive damages play a more and more deterrent role to enterprises that produce and sell dangerous products. Punitive damages are mainly aimed at those behaviors that the injurer has serious faults subjectively, is malicious or simply ignores the legitimate rights and interests of the victim. Many multinational companies in the United States have learned their lessons. For example, in 2005, the American court found that the anti-inflammatory and analgesic drug "Wanluo" produced by Merck led to the death of the plaintiff's husband, and ordered Merck to pay the plaintiff $24 million in compensatory damages and $229 million in punitive damages. Severe punitive damages will make the public feel that the law strongly denies an infringement, and to some extent, it can encourage some victims to bravely file lawsuits to expose illegal acts, so that food enterprises can feel this powerful deterrent and be afraid, so as to put an end to or minimize the occurrence of infringement.