Part V Apple Juice: Product of Michigan China

Inspection of imports; pesticides

Pesticides are great for killing insects or other bacterias that can harm other plants or animals. The benefits of inspection of imports is that there is less harm to the one's consuming the product. Kelsey Timmerman touched about this subject in his book "Where Am I Eating?" There many excellent example that he gives from before the FDA began inspecting the imports and after FDA starting inspecting the products. "Each year 5,000 Americans are killed and 325,000 hospitalized by contaminated food" (Timmerman 200). This is a reason why the FDA passed a law called FSMA which is The Food Safety Modernization Act. The purpose of this law is to give authority the FDA to check that the importers verify their supplies have proper food safety. The purpose of that is the consumers won't be eating contaminated food. EPA regulates pesticides by the law FIFRA which is the  Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. If there was a lot of pesticides that would also harm the products that are going to be imported. The importer must take it to Notice of arrival (NOA) to get the products checked for the amount pesticides, time arrived and where the product can be inspected. I believe all of the products should be check whether it is food or pesticides so we can avoid all of these dangerous situation. Foods are contaminated because they might have come from a dirty environment or whatever may be the case because that happens because the food is not being inspected beforehand. Then if you have a large amount of pesticides that's bad too because it can harm humans and animals that consume the products. Which is why I believe the inspection of imports; pesticides should be more enforced for our safety. There are laws that regulate the inspection of imports; pesticides but I don't feel like it is being enforced as much as it should be because you still hear about people going to the hospital because they ate contaminated food. In my opinion people should be going to the hospital in that amount of rate that should be down the minimum since we have all of these resources to use. What do you think we should do about the inspection of imports and pesticides?