Mark Bittman Criticizes Federal Food Safety Laws

In a recent online article, New York Times food critic Mark Bittman criticized the federal government’s unwillingness to regulate the animal agriculture industry’s food safety standards and its continued allowance of salmonella-tainted meat to be sold to consumers. Bittman noted how heavy antibiotic use in factory farms is causing the development of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, which are more lethal and may be harder to kill through standard food preparation methods. He then called on the Food Safety and Inspection Service and the US Department of Agriculture to eliminate the use of prophylactic antibiotics on farm animals and to take all salmonella-tainted meat off the market. “This is not a [government] shutdown issue,” writes Bittman, “but a ‘we care more about industry than we do about consumers’ issue.”