Salmonella Outbreak in Tomatoes - Food Safety Inspection

I was reading the New York times today and of course there is the current problem of tracking down the salmonella outbreak in certain kinds of tomatoes and these from different parts of the country. ("Tomatoes grown in the following states, territories and countries have not been associated with the current outbreak: Arkansas, California, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Belgium, Canada, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Israel, the Netherlands and Puerto Rico." - from the New York Times story of June 11, 2008)

Here is an excerpt from the New York times story about the Federal government increasing funding for food safety:

"And federal authorities have yet to create a stronger set of rules and enforcement procedures. Many parties — food-safety advocates, food producers, Congressional Republicans and Democrats and even some within the F.D.A. — have said such rules are essential to make food safer.

In November the food and drug agency released a “food protection plan,” but the Bush administration did not ask for the money to finance parts of it until Monday night. The health and human services secretary, Michael O. Leavitt, said on Monday that he would amend the administration’s budget request by asking for an additional $275 million for next year, $125 million of which would go to food protection.

At a news conference, Mr. Leavitt said he “would like to once again strongly urge Congress to act quickly to enhance the safety of food and medical products,” comments that angered some in Congress, including Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Specter said that administration delays in seeking money for food protection efforts at the food and drug agency amounted to “criminal negligence.”

“The failure to have these inspections is subjecting people to bodily injury and death,” said Mr. Specter, who sent a letter to Mr. Leavitt on Tuesday insisting that the additional money for the F.D.A. should be included in a supplemental request this year, not in next year’s budget.

Food-safety advocates criticized what they said was the government’s inaction in preventing outbreaks of food poisoning.

“How many times does this have to happen before F.D.A. gets serious about food safety?” asked Sarah Klein, a staff lawyer at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

So I looked at what does the government do to inspect our food and it seems that there are industrial machines that irradiate food such as pork to kill the parasites that cause trichinosis, which would allow the pork seller to label their package for sale as "certified pork".

See this information on the United States Department of Agriculture website at:

USDA website

The data on this website is from 2001, so there may be updates on the website. Another way that our food is protected is through the use of large, industrial food scanning machines, which search for contaminants through the use of xraying the food, using electron beams and some other-worldly scientific processes.

I found a link of a picture and demo of one of these machines:

food safety inspection machines

and here is another:

food safety inspection technology

Looking at these machines and also with my previous posts on dc high voltage power supplies and high voltage electronics, it's apparent to me that some of these food safety inspection machines, with their sizes, would need extensive high voltage power supply units. It's amazing to see the applications of science in our every day lives. I thought high voltage power supplies were only for railroads, ct scanners and hospital xray machines. I have much to learn.