15 • TIMES, THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 2015 FDA Should Help Clean Filthy Food Distributors Seek More Inspections & Fines Sen. Charles E. Schumer urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to implement a three-step plan to address recent reports of rat-infested and otherwise insanitary food warehouses that supply food to restaurants across the country and could be a threat to public health in New York City and elsewhere. Toward the end of last year, it was reported, the FDA had inspected a Brooklyn-based food supplier’s warehouse in October and found rodent carcasses, rodent feces and more. Additionally, in 2014, the FDA sent warning letters to 90 other food facilities across the country specifically regarding insanitary conditions at their food-processing sites, including: inadequate hygienic practices at a frozen pizza dough and cheese grating facility; insects at a facility that produces rice; and dead mice and dead rats at a cookie manufacturing facility. Equally disturbing to the conditions themselves, Schumer stated, there is also no easilyaccessible, real-time, source of information for restaurants or consumers to discover which food processing and production facilities have FDA food safety violations, and to react accordingly. Therefore, restaurant owners may not find out that a facility has experienced violations before it continues to purchase and serve food from this facility, and consumers could then be at risk. In light of these recent discoveries at a wide-variety of food facilities which appear systemic, the senator said, the FDA should first, increase the regularity of inspections of all food facilities or processing sites for unsanitary conditions. Schumer explained that the FDA only inspects “high risk” food facilities once every three years, and even less often for those that have not yet received violations. More inspections will also benefit facilities that have had small violations, who should be allowed to quickly rectify the problem and be able to return to business, he added. -SEE STORAGE ON PG. 52- ©Times Newsweekly - 2014 - ONEILLS
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