Lettuce and Beef Recalls Show Food Safety Rules Can’t Make Us Perfectly Safe All the Time: New at Reason

This holiday season has not been a good one for food safety regulators.

In December, a months-old recall of salmonella-tainted ground beef (that initially passed USDA inspection) was expanded to include more than 12 million pounds. And widespread contamination of romaine lettuce caused the Centers for Disease Control to take the unusual step of warning Americans not to eat any romaine whatsoever.

Since the romaine outbreak began began two months ago, more than 50 people across the country have been sickened by eating lettuce contaminated with E. coli, a potentially deadly bacteria, according to reports.

These recent events have shone a new light on the failure of much ballyhooed regulations to improve food safety in America, writes Baylen Linnekin.

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