While most successful food producers are far more diligent — big name-brand peanut butter is considered safe, for example — American consumers have faced far too many food-supply emergencies in the last few years. Congress and the Obama administration must finally make food safety a serious priority.

The new agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, is talking about creating “a modern, unified food-safety agency capable of reducing the risk of food-borne illness.” Many thoughtful food-safety experts have been calling for such an approach for years. Today’s patchwork system requires frozen pizzas to be inspected by two agencies: one if they’re cheese and another if they’re pepperoni.(1)

What an idea…putting food safety in the forefront of National Policy. The next thing you know we’ll be actually enforcing our environmental laws…Oh, wait, we have a new administration and an actual put the people first policy…See, elections do matter.

(1) via Editorial – Dangerous Food – NYTimes.com.