Regional food safety lab needed in California
Yesterday's Bakersfield Californian had an interesting editorial about the lack of a regional food safety lab in California. A main point about the lab was that:
Industrial scale processing, packaging and shipping of perishable items often leads to consumer consumption faster than regulatory agencies can react.The regional food safety labs bring together experts from the federal and state governments, as well as industry, whose work is complementary rather than wasteful competition.
If the work of a regional lab fosters collaboration among scientists, the idea would be that food contamination could be discovered sooner and outbreaks could either be prevented or stopped while in their infancy instead of reacted to after they were full-blown. The Californian's editorial accused Rep. John Doolittle of kiilling an effort to put in a regional food safety lab at UC Davis by cutting $1 million from a $100 billion Agriculture appropriations bill.
