Obama Expected to Sign FDA Food Safety Overhaul

Consumers may not notice many of the changes that are expected to come with the sweeping U.S. Food and Drug Administration Food Safety Modernization Act -- other than a hoped-for drop in the number of those sickened from tainted food.

"The Food Safety Modernization Act is the most significant food safety law of the last 100 years," said Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a media briefing today. "It will bring our food safety system into the 21st century ... helping Americans feel confident that when they sit down at the dinner table they won't end up in the hospital."

President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law Tuesday, Sebelius said. The act updates and combines a patchwork quilt of laws put into place over the last 70 years.

What the act will do, among other things, is give the FDA recall power -- rather than waiting on companies to initiate a recall which can happen after most of the contaminated food has already been eaten.The act also expands inspection programs, creates standards for food producers and farmers and aims at better tracking of food-borne illness outbreaks. Good thing too -- the U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimated one in six Americans -- that's 48 million people -- get sick from a food-borne illness each year, not counting those hospitalized (128,000) and the 3,000 deaths.