Food-Bourne Illnesses Issue #2

E-coli and other food-bourne illnesses are usually not thought about to much in the U.S. So in 2006, when the e-coli bacteria was proven to have made people sick due to eating contaminated spinach. This out break killed 3 people and sickened 200. They found that wild pigs spread it in to the spinach fields of a California farmer, from contaminated cow manure. Many other incidents came after this, causing people to become ill. Fresh fruit and vegetables, along with the organic makes it easier to contracted e-coli because unlike meats, fresh fruits and vegetables can not be cooked. Cooking meats, such as beef kills the bacteria and makes it safe to eat. But eating organic and fresh fruits and vegetables makes killing the bacteria impossible.

Some people are saying that better regulation is needed. A better regulation that is run by the government. The Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (FDA), due to the out break, received a budget cut of 37%. If the government were to step in and regulate everything that the agricultural farmers were doing, the cost of produce would sky rocket. All of the agricultural farms would have to be inspected and meat regulations that would make it so that farmers would have to raise their prices to cover extra costs. I feel that if the farmers were helped and given the tools needed to make their production more efficient and increase the safety levels without causing a sky-rocket in prices. This could be done by having an inspection once or twice a year just to make sure that there are no possible factors that could cause an e-coli or other bacterial outbreak.  So without taking things to an extreme, some type of regulation is needed just to help ensure that there is not another ourbreak.

http://kellimontbriand.blogspot.com/2010/11/issue-1-comprehensive-vs-incremental.html

http://aaron2010blog.blogspot.com/2010/11/ensuring-quality-care-for-medicare.html