Tell Your Senators: Make Our Food Safe! - The Petition Site

Tell Your Senators: Make Our Food Safe! - The Petition Site

Every year, 76 million Americans are sickened and 325,000 are hospitalized from consuming contaminated food -- and 5,000 of these people die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Our food safety law clearly is not up to the task. Unbelievably, the Food and Drug Administration only inspects food factories on average once every 10 years, checks less than 1 percent of food shipments imported from China and other foreign countries and doesn't even have the authority to force food companies to recall contaminated foods.

Continued outbreaks of food contamination over the last several years -- from spinach to peppers to peanuts -- have demonstrated that these outbreaks are not random, unpreventable occurrences, but are due to widespread problems with our food safety system.

Our current food system is broken and in need of reform. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed bipartisan food safety reform legislation in July 2009 that would update the law and strengthen the system: Now the Senate must act. Your Senators have the opportunity to change course and help protect children, families, senior citizens and all others from foodborne illness.

Tell your Senators it is time to pass strong food safety legislation now!