New York - President Bill Clinton will propose a significant rise in funding for U.S. food safety programs in the budget to be presented to Congress early next year, The New York Timeion and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bringing funding to $817 million for all federal food safety programs.
The plan was motivated by outbreaks in the last year across the United States of food-borne illness from tainted Guatemalan raspberries, Louisiana oysters and Midwestern ground beef, said the report.
"What we are trying to do is take the agencies that deal with food inspection from the 19th century to the 21st century," the paper quoted an unidentified senior White House official as saying.
The official insisted on anonymity because the figures he was discussing won't be officially released until February.
"We are carrying out the first update of our food safety programs in 90 years," he told the newspaper.
The money being proposed is in the budget for the fiscal year that starts on Oct. 1.
Since taking office in 1993, Clinton has increased food safety spending by more than 60 percent.
The additional money would be used to hire new scientists and up to 100 new inspectors who would be sent overseas to examine farming, including the use of fertilizers and pesticides. The money would also be used to buy new equipment to detect food-borne diseases, the official said.
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