The FDA might be FD-abolished if talking wig Donald Trump becomes president. The Republican party nominee's campaign released a (now deleted) fact sheet detailing his economic plan today. One portion of the sheet revealed Trump would eliminate food safety regulations if elected, The Hill reported.
Trump is apparently no fan of the Food and Drug Administration, calling them the "FDA police" in the fact sheet. "The FDA Food Police, which dictate how the federal government expects farmers to produce fruits and vegetables and even dictates the nutritional content of dog food." Pfft ... who dare tell Trump what the nutrition of his dog food should be?! Not the FDA, according to him.
The presidential nominee thinks the FDA meddles too much in farmer affairs. "The [FDA] rules govern the soil farmers use, farm and food production hygiene, food packaging, food temperatures and even what animals may roam which fields and when," the fact sheet continued, according to Salon.
"[The FDA] also greatly increased inspections of food 'facilities,' and levies new taxes to pay for this inspection overkill," the fact sheet continued. The agency, according to The Hill, recently completed an overhaul of its food safety system. It now requires manufacturers of both human and animal food to "implement preventive controls to minimize the risk of contaminating food when it's manufactured," The Hill wrote. What human that eats food would oppose such caution over food safety? Donald Trump, it appears.
While Trump believes, according to Salon, that scaling back food safety regulations could help the government save $1 trillion over the next decade, the U.S. has a serious food safety issue on its hands. In 2015, there were 626 food recalls in the U.S. and Canada, Food Safety Magazine reported. That works out to more than one recall per day. One of these recalled foods, a soft cheese which was first recalled in 2010, resulted in the death of three people and 30 illnesses, Food Safety News noted. How many dangerous foods would go unreported, and cause illnesses or worse, without monitoring from the FDA?
While decreasing the activity of the FDA may save the government some money, it will probably cost companies millions of dollars to clean up recalls that could have been prevented by FDA inspections.
Food safety issues are not cheap to recover from: To bounce back from the disastrous E.coli outbreak that rocked the chain, Chipotle spent tons of money cleaning up its restaurants and offering customers free food to lure them back in. Ice cream brand Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream says a Listeria outbreak in their production facility ended up costing the company an estimated $2.5 million, Eater reported.
So while saving tax payers and government some money is a good thing, hopefully Trump can find places, other than the FDA and food regulations to cut from. Otherwise, the future may be one where all of the burritos have E.coli, all of the ice cream has listeria and all of the pills that are supposed to fix those issues are not tested. Sounds like the opposite of making America great again.