FDA Approved

According to Wikipedia, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is responsible for the safety regulation of most types of foods, dietary supplements, drugs, vaccines, biological medical products, blood products, medical devices, radiation-emitting devices, veterinary products, and cosmetics.

The FDA's federal budget request for 2008 totaled $2.1 billion, which seems plenty to protect Americans from dishonest providers of products. As I read all the departments involved and the scope of their responsibilities, it became obvious that there aren’t resources to do the job.

The FDA was extremely slow in warning the public as to the pet food fiasco where many Americans lost their beloved pets before the recalls were finally put in place. I was lucky in that I wasn’t buying any of the recalled list at the time.

All the effort drug companies go through to get FDA approval runs in the hundreds of millions so say nothing of medical equipment companies spend. So why do we have to buy test kits and rub various parts of toys to make sure we’re not killing our children? It turns out that the trade agreements our government officials have signed have such low testing and anti-poisoning statutes, that it was inevitable that our kids would be jeopardized in the process.

Besides sending the manufacturing jobs overseas that are involved with toy production the trade agreements made toxic poisons a cheap alternative to safe materials. These cost savings not only made for much larger corporate profits that make the investor class smile, but allowed huge incentive checks for the management teams that authorized the dangerous materials. Makes one wonder if they bring any of these deadly toys home for their own kids, doesn’t it.