In every day life, we eat around three meals a day, and how often can we say that we truly have thought about how our food was produced or how the process was regulated? Most people don’t consider where their food comes from or who looks over it and that is a problem. Food borne illness kill around 5,000 people a year. That is just the number of casualties, the number of people effected by food born illness is around 76 million, which is serious number. There are handful of government agencies that look over the United State’s food production. The two primary agencies being the USDA and the FDA. Both agencies look over some of the same areas, however, they also regulate different aspects. In “ Resisting Food Safety” by Marion Nestle some of these guidelines are described. Nestle states that the FDA regulates: “ All foods (except meat, poultry, and processed eggs), they do regulate animal drugs and feeds” (Nestle, Pg56) The article also states the USDA’s regulations as: “ Meat, poultry, processed eggs, safety of eggs, egg products, inspects corn, fruits, vegetables, protects animals and plants from disease, and conducts research on food safety.”(Nestle, g56) The USDA regulates much more because there are various branches found inside of the USDA such as the FSIS, AMS, GIPSA, APHIS, and ARS. Even though the FDA and USDA are separate agencies, there is a very thin line between what they regulate. That statement sounds confusing  but Nestle provides good examples to support how feeble and vague the guidelines are. Nestle shows a graph that describes the regulations as: “ The USDA regulates hot dogs in pastry roll, and the FDA regulates Hot dogs in rolls. The USDA regulates soups with more than 2% meat and poultry, and the FDA regulates soups with less than 2% of meat and poultry. The USDA regulates corn dogs, the FDA regulates bagel dogs.” (Nestle, pG 57) These regulations are unlikely to be dangerous, however, it shows how 1% too much of meat and poultry can change the jurisdiction of the inspection which involves a terrifying amount of complexity and it seems highly unnecessary. To make things even worse, the USDA has only 7,000 inspectors that regulate 6,000 meat, poultry, an egg establishments and 130 importers. These importers slaughter hundreds of millions of animals and produce billions of pounds of meat that needs to be inspected by the scrawny team of 7,000. Another figure to prove how insanely low the USDA’s number of employees is fall in the poultry plants. The poultry plants slaughter 90 birds per minute meaning that every USDA inspector needs to inspect a staggering 35 birds per minute. How on earth is someone expected to check an entire bird in less than 2 seconds? Its absolutely absurd to say the least. It is hard to believe but the FDA’s demands are worse. The FDA has only 700 employees that inspect 30,000 food manufacturers, 20,000 warehouses, 785,000 food establishments and 1.5 million vending operations. If one were to calculate with the vending operations alone it would lead to every inspector having to check 2,142 vending operations alone without any other aspects of the FDA’s responsibilities involved. These numbers are not only unreasonable but impossible. These kinds of figures lead people to ask why we have so few employees regulating something so important. These agencies are in charge of the safety of the American people in terms of the food that they consume and the fact that the two most important divisions have less than 8,000 employees is completely disgusting. For a matter as serious as the health of hundreds of millions there should be at least tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of employees regulating our safety in the food industry. The problem of food safety grows even deeper when it comes to the employees working in the processing plants. In “Resisting Food Safety” Nestle discusses a statement from Eric Schlosser, one of the head producers of Food Inc. by stating: “Much of the actual work in the food industry—in agriculture, slaughterhouses, processing plants, and places where food is served—is carried out by immigrants, teenager, and other groups payed at minimum wage. (Nestle, Pg 31) This statement is very concerning and in Food Inc.(Produced by Eric Schlosser provider of info for the previous quote), a documentary on the food industry, the topic of immigrant workers in the meat industry is brought up. At Smithfield, one of the nations leading meat producers, thousands of immigrants are hired a year to work on the production line. The immigration of these people started in response to 1.5 Mexican million farmers being put out of work in due to the drug wars and Mexicans realizing that farming wouldn’t support their families because of a lacking flow of income.  These workers are brought to the US to work for these huge corporations and the only way to stay here is if they maintain these jobs. Their families, healthcare, and housing all rely on their jobs and the corporations hiring them know that and will exploit them because of it. A Smithfield worker was quoted in Food Inc saying: “The people at Smithfield know you cant live without the job so they hold it over you.” (Smithfield Worker, Food Inc.) These major companies give these people an ultimatum with only one outcome and thats to work for them or lose everything. Corporations like Smithfield also have very disturbing standards when it comes to immigration. To start off, immigration is illegal, however, these corporations still immigrate workers in to the United Sates. To make it worse, these companies also sign deals with The Department of Immigration to deport a set number of employees daily by giving them addresses and names. For example, Smithfield deports 15 employees a day. These double standards are unethical and wrong without a doubt but the real question is why aren’t agencies such as the USDA or FDA doing anything about it? How are they allowing illegal immigration and even worse, how are they letting these immigrants handle our food? This whole system is very corrupt. In Food Inc. Eric Schlosser articulates: “ Government turned a blind eye on companies bringing in immigrants.”( Eric Schlosser, Food Inc.) We are not completely sure why the government does this, maybe it has to do with the amount of power that these corporations have and it also might have to do with the fact that these workers can be exploited and payed little to no money, nevertheless, it’s still messed up. Immigration is a very sticky situation and it needs to be cleaned up for the sake of the people being exploited, and for the health of the American people because of the responsibility that these corporations place on these immigrants to handle and process our food. Another problem observed with agencies such as the FDA, is their lack of enforcement and quickness. In “You are what they eat” by Consumer Reports, Fred Angulo, chief of the CDC’s food borne and diarrheal branch is quoted saying: “ It would help to gave a “farm to fork” surveillance system such as those in Europe that looks for contamination in feed, animals, the marketplace, and humans.” (Fred Angulo, You are what they eat, pg.28) This would require a system for feed processing that would be very similar to animal processing with built in procedures to prevent contamination. Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine says: “the agency is engaged in the discussion with the feed industry” (Sundlof, You are what they eat, pg 28) An FDA spokeswoman at the time added to that by calling the system a “priority, but it may not be fully implemented until 2007.” (FDA spokeswoman, You are what they eat, pg28) This issue was published in 2005, meaning that the system would be put into place  2 full years later. If this system is working so well in other continents and if it’s a so called “priority” then the system should be in place within months. In Food Inc. we also see a lack of urgency with the case of 2 year old Kevin. In Food Inc. a young boy named Kevin was killed by E-Coli at the age of 2 by eating tainted processed meat. The story is utterly heartbreaking but the part that stuck out to me was the way that the FDA handled the situation. Kevin had already died, leaving his family in agony and after tons of complaints and yelling out, the FDA called a voluntary recall after 16 days. This product not only took the life of a young boy but it was also able to run rampant around the country infecting more and more people for over 2 whole weeks. Kevin’s mother explained in the film that she wanted nobody else to go through what her family had to and that’s why they begged that the FDA call for a recall. It appears that the FDA has the ideas and tools that they need to create change for the health of the American people but they don’t enforce these changes in a timely manner leaving more people vulnerable to food borne illnesses such as E-Coli that killed baby Kevin at the young age of 2. There obviously needs to be reform and it needs to be done soon.