A report released Wednesday by Trust for America's Health in conjunction with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation suggests the Obama administration should appoint a senior food safety official within the Food and Drug Administration to take charge of food safety as an interim step toward fixing the much-criticized U.S. food safety system.
 
The report was titled “Keeping America's Food Safe: A Blueprint for Fixing the Food Safety System at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.”
 
“Our food safety system is plagued with problems and is leading to millions of Americans becoming severely sick each year,” Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust for America's Health said. “The system is outdated and unable to effectively deal with today's threats. Its current structure actually prevents the kind of coordinated, focused effort that Americans need more than ever and have a right to expect,” he added.
 
The FDA has been highly criticized for its way of dealing with Americans’ food safety. The salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter and peanut butter products was the latest in a series of never-ending outbreaks that have affected Americans in the recent years.
 
The outbreak sickened almost 700 people in 46 states this year. Nine people are believed to have died from that episode. Other episodes for which the FDA was accused of not doing its job properly were imports of the 2008 melamine-contaminated infant formula and related diary products in China, the 2008 Salmonella outbreak linked to peppers and a 2008 Salmonella outbreak from imported cantaloupes.
 
About one in four Americans, or 76 million people, get sick from foodborne illnesses each year, more than 300,000 are hospitalized and 500,000 die, Michelle Larkin of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said.
 
The authors of the report recommend the creation of a Food Safety Administration, under the Department of Health and Human Services, which could do more for Americans’ safety than the FDA is currently doing.