Food safety in processed foods in the USA is a major issue, and the fact is, preventing microbial contamination in the pipeline leading from raw ingredients to final product is an expensive proposition. To have any chance of catching problems before they hit the public, you really need an onsite QA lab capable of doing microbial contamination tests (and heavy metal contamination tests) at every step of the process.
In-house labs are notoriously subject to corporate pressure to pass product through (consider the expense of having to toss an entire production run), and this leads to the promotion of those who don't back up production by waving red flags when product fails tests.
One solution is aggressive testing and auditing by the FDA, i.e. swooping in and grabbing samples of product, but this is where political pressure to deregulate industries comes into play, and again, anyone at the FDA promoting this approach won't get promoted up the government ladder.
Another solution might be legislation requiring independent accredited labs to be involved in the testing process, but again you can have massive problems here as the labs that pass questionable product are the ones who get their contracts renewed. It's probably the best option - but my advice is to just avoid highly processed foods as much as possible.
In-house labs are notoriously subject to corporate pressure to pass product through (consider the expense of having to toss an entire production run), and this leads to the promotion of those who don't back up production by waving red flags when product fails tests.
One solution is aggressive testing and auditing by the FDA, i.e. swooping in and grabbing samples of product, but this is where political pressure to deregulate industries comes into play, and again, anyone at the FDA promoting this approach won't get promoted up the government ladder.
Another solution might be legislation requiring independent accredited labs to be involved in the testing process, but again you can have massive problems here as the labs that pass questionable product are the ones who get their contracts renewed. It's probably the best option - but my advice is to just avoid highly processed foods as much as possible.