Someone has made a point of publicly lambasting food companies for not keeping records of their suppliers to the media. According to the Wall Street Journal, more than half of the facilities surveyed by the Department of Health and Human Services‘ inspector general say they didn’t keep records, didn’t know they were suppose to keep records, or complained recordkeeping was too difficult.
A 2002 bioterrorism law requires food makers, processors and distributors to keep records showing from whom they bought products and to whom they sold them. Some lawmakers want to extend the bioterrorism reporting requirements to cover farms and restaurants, which are now exempt.
Tom Stenzel, chief executive of the United Fresh Produce Association points out it’s simply lax FDA enforcement. “(We) know of no instances where FDA has taken any regulatory action to cite a produce company or its customers for failure to provide adequate records as required by the Act,” he told lawmakers. If the FDA did their job and monitored, tested, and inspected our food supply chain, they wouldn’t need to concentrate on tracing the origin of contaminated food AFTER THE FACT.