This summer the efficient FDA blamed tomatoes for a salmonella.outbreak. Ruined the farmer. OOOPS! It wasn't tomatoes. Instead, Jalapeño and Serrano peppers grown in Mexico, caused the salmonella outbreak.
Melamine Food Contamination Spreads to U.S.
Haven't you listened to the news lately or read FR?
Yes, I know all about the examples you've cited and I agree and heads should roll.
I picked "chiles" *weeks* before the FDA finally admitted it. It was obvious based on the reports that the outbreaks occurred in known "Latino" cities in the USA. The lockdown on reporting the ethnicity of the victims also gave it away. Early on I watched a long interview with on FDA scientist on (C-SPAN?) and it was patently clear that she'd been coached to avoid any mention or whisper of "Mexico".
But this is part and parcel of the utter corruption of an federal government which kowtows to the Mexico lobby both here and south of the border. That was not inherently an FDA problem IMO.
The melamine problem is a stumper. American companies apparently buy HUGE wholesale lots of China *ingredients* for their products in addition to the end products themselves (e.g. dogfood). Go to alibaba.com and take a look at China wholesale offerings (it's owned by Yahoo and is one of the largest China trade sites on the Internet).
The recent problem with baby formula *and* animal feed IMO might both have come from the bulk protein supplements and additives (soy, albumin, and whey) which I found were documented to have melamine contamination *more than one year ago*. Not much of that appeared in the news from what I could find.
I don't know where FDA stands on that quite frankly. Clearly they need to act more diligently.
But this is all very different from the issue of refusing to obtain a local county license to sell retail food products in the USA.
This is what you get with no licensing, no food inspections, no FDA, and no "government control":