FDA Vows Safety Crackdown

(CBC)

The Food and Drug Administration’s new chief promised Thursday to crack down on food and drug companies that break the law, as the agency tries to regain its footing after a string of high-profile safety problems.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said her agency must act more swiftly and aggressively against companies that don’t meet safety standards.

In recent years, the agency’s efforts “have been hampered by unreasonable delays” that allowed safety violations to go unaddressed, Hamburg told an audience of food and drug industry lawyers.

The FDA has struggled for years to keep up with its rising responsibilities to oversee health care and food products. Since early 2008, the agency has been criticized for its handling of tainted peanut butter that sickened hundreds, contaminated blood thinners imported from China linked to deaths, and an investigation into a salmonella outbreak that dragged on for weeks before peppers were identified as the culprit. Read more here.