The Takeaway: Don't Eat Fruits and Vegetables During the Shutdown

For whatever reason it seems that the FDA has been deemed non-essential.

Now comes this: the federal government shutdown has deemed most of the FDA, which handles about 80% of food inspections, as “non-essential.”

“That means there are about 500 food facilities a week that are not being inspected by the FDA and those are all potential threats to the U.S. food supply,” says Alan Bjerga, an agricultural policy reporter for Bloomberg News.

Meat product inspection will remain funded and running, but fruit and vegetable inspection will fall by the wayside. The FDA had 37 recalls of fruit and vegetables in 2011, up from two in 2005.

Yeah some of the worst food poisoning outbreaks were from vegetables in the past few years. For instance Cyclospora was found in bagged lettuce that sicked like 400 people this past summer. So if the FDA is short-staffed then maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to eat bagged lettuce until after the government gets back to work.