News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found violations of its egg safety rules on about 40% of the farms it inspected in 2011, but only about 3% of the problems were serious enough to call for FDA action, according to an agency report released yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – The goal of an integrated national biosurveillance system to detect threats to human and animal health, called for in a presidential directive in 2004, is still a long way from reality and faces complex obstacles, according to a workshop summary recently published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM).

(CIDRAP News) – Although no successful attacks on the US agriculture and food system have been reported in the past decade, the nation's efforts to defend the system came in for a barrage of criticism yesterday about a lack of coordination and various other shortcomings.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) today proposed a new system to improve the tracing of diseased and at-risk livestock, aiming to replace a previous national animal identification program that met widespread opposition from livestock producers.

(CIDRAP News) – As the clock ticked toward a possible US government shutdown at midnight, federal officials said today that key activities to keep food safe and otherwise control infectious diseases would continue, albeit at reduced levels in many cases.