Bella Cook

Is the FDA Effectively Doing Their Job?

PROS OF THE FDA: The FDA gives restrictions of what companies can and can’t do. Like one type of food can have a matter of 400 bug parts. Most people would say that’s gross but, can you even see the bug parts? Do you think you yourself could find an ant in 2 cups of rice? You wouldn’t be able to. There is no effective way to find every single bug part and kill it. At least the FDA made a limit or, there could be whole entire cockroaches in our food. The FDA also doesn’t allow things like E. coli in our food. So, they are making sure companies aren’t selling dangerous things that can harm or kill us. If the FDA didn’t have these restrictions, a lot of people could have died.

CONS OF THE FDA: The FDA does not do everything they can to prevent gross to deadly things in our food. First off, they allow bugs in our food. They also allow lots of animals to be in the same space, like chickens, which can cause and spread deadly diseases to the animals that we eat. They even allow food and plant plantations to be near each other. This causes diseases animals have, to go to the food. The companies have to test their food for this bacteria, but they don’t prevent the bacteria and diseases from getting on plants and animals. They can make restrictions for how temperature to cook meat, but obviously everyone isn’t going to follow that. They need to check on all of these plantations and restaurants more often instead of waiting for something to happen to do it. 

MY PERSONAL OPINION: I think the FDA does have some reasonable and effective restrictions. But that is obviously not enough if people are dying. You could say it’s not the FDA’s fault someone went against their restrictions, but they don’t even find out until something horrible happens. They should be checking in on those companies more to make sure all regulations are being followed, and if they’re not, prevent people from getting hurt by it. In conclusion, I think they have good rules, but just need to make sure everyone is following them and make more regulations like, for example; the FDA testing for bacteria and not the company. So, they can find out if someone’s breaking regulations before something bad happens.