Do You Feel Your Food is Safe?

Would you like to know more about where your food came from and if the government inspected the items? If you're like many Americans, you would.

According to MarketWatch, a new Consumer Reports national poll found that consumers--by a huge margin--are concerned about food safety. They want the government to inspect the food supply more frequently and to make more information available when food safety problems come up.

Currently, the FDA inspects domestic food production facilities once every 5 to 10 years, and foreign facilities even less frequently, according to the article.

Urvashi Rangan, senior scientist and policy analyst at Consumers Union, is quoted in the article: "The American public wants to know more about their food, where it comes from, how safe it is, and will vote with their dollars to support highly meaningful labels."

Some findings from the poll:

• Seventy-three percent of people polled currently consider the overall food supply as safe, but nearly half (48 percent) said their confidence in the safety of the nation's food supply has decreased.
• Eighty-three percent are concerned with harmful bacteria or chemicals in food and 81 percent are concerned with the safety of imported food.
• Americans want to close loopholes in Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) for processed food, butcher shops and fish markets, and they believe that processed or packaged food should be labeled by their country of origin.
• Americans want cloned or genetically engineered animals to be labeled, and most would not buy such meat or milk.

You can find a a copy of the poll on the Greener Choices website.

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