Vilsack is open to a single agency for food safety

(This item was updated from an advance notice of Vilsack's appearance.)

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said today that the time have finally arrived for a single federal agency to handle food safety. "Currently the job of meat and poultry safety is with the USDA, but the FDA handles most everything else," Brownfield Network reports. "Every agriculture secretary in the last three decades has rejected the single agency handling food safety," and legislation to unify the function has always failed.

Vilsack said on Oregon Public Radio's "Think Out Loud" show, “There are 325,000 people in this country that are hospitalized every year for food-borne illnesses and countless millions that have problems that they don’t even realize are connected to their food supply. That suggests to us that we’ve got an issue and we’re the only industrialized country in the world, to my knowledge, that has two separate departments handling this very important responsibility.” To listen to the show, click here.