On September 23, 2010, at the National Food Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., Under Secretary for Food Safety Dr. Elisabeth Hagen outlined the United States Department of Agriculture's vision on modernizing the Department's food safety efforts on behalf of consumers. The upshot of Dr. Hagen's remarks were that the food safety system currently relies too much on reaction to problems to make people safe. Dr. Hagen's goal is to move towards a more proactive approach to food safety that stresses prevention using new tools being rolled out.
Read Dr. Hagen's full comments here.