food safety legislationSan Jose Mercury News reports that California lawmakers are looking into changing food-safety laws.

California has been “asleep at the wheel” when it comes to preventing produce contamination, according to a Central Valley legislator who ended a food-safety hearing Wednesday by saying it’s time to stop letting growers police themselves.
“We have a very, very poor and lax system here,” said state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Bakersfield, adding that he wants to propose strict new regulations for the industry. He said a string of contamination outbreaks in the past decade — nine of them traced to spinach and lettuce from the Salinas Valley — shows the state’s policy of working cooperatively with farmers has failed.