The Federal Food Safety Working Group Progress and Assessments

American consumers deserve to trust the safety of the food they purchase for themselves and their families. While we enjoy one of the safest food supplies in the world, it requires constant monitoring. We need to be able to rapidly identify and address risks to our food supply as a result of new disease agents, new food technologies, changes in U.S. demographic and dietary patterns, and an abundance of food imports resulting from an increasingly globalised food supply. The federal government has taken important steps to protect an increasingly complex food supply. In March 2009, President Obama created the Food Safety Working Group (FSWG), a central coordinating mechanism for the federal government's food safety activities that is led by the Department of Health and Human Services and the USDA. This book provides an overview of the progress and assessments of the Federal Food Safety Working Group with a focus on results oriented goals and performance measures for food safety oversight.