Food safety in the United States

Food safety in the United States relates to the processing, packaging, and storage of food in a way that prevents food-borne illness within the United States.^[1] The beginning of regulation on food safety in the United States started in the early 1900s, when several outbreaks sparked the need for litigation managing food in the food industry. Over the next few decades, the United States created several government agencies in an effort to better understand contaminants in food and to regulate these impurities. Many laws regarding food safety in the United States have been created and amended since the beginning of the 1900s. Food makers and their products are inspected and regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture.

The United States has recently taken food safety into consideration again after several deadly outbreaks occurred in the early 2000s. Incidents such as the E.coli contaminated spinach in 2006 bring attention to the regulation surrounding the food industry and food quality control. Many outbreaks have occurred because of loose enforcement of regulation and lack of quality testing of every batch of food that is being produced. Most legislation regarding food safety is in the wake of a deadly outbreak of a food-borne illness. The bacteria and viruses that cause most of the food-borne illnesses are Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, norovirus, Campylobacter, and Clostridium perfringens.^[2] These can lead to some deadly diseases that have killed many people in the United States.