The tort reform movement in the United States
The civil justice structure is a critical institutional context in the United States. When the system is working appropriately, it provides an open and unbiased forum to resolve disputes among parties, suitably compensation for the legally harmed individuals. Besides, civil justice serves effectively as restrictive to undesirable behavior in the country, from individuals to public and private enterprises. Above and beyond, the civil justice system in the United States is designed to offer appropriate remedies for harmed parties along with incentives for accountable action. In other words, the system is intending to be corrective, unransomed, and predictable. Tort litigation as a part of the civil justice context can be exceedingly beneficial to the United States society. It promotes equal and fair justice and establishes part of the crucial framework in which business activities can prosper, thus improving the economy in the country. It provides organized resolve of disputes, decreases conflict, and motivates production using harmless practices, which benefits the whole society. A faulty civil justice system tends to generate increased damages levels or even unpredictable awards, thus leading to negative impacts via the misallocation of the human resources in the society.
In the United States, the tort law system is deteriorating in achieving both of its primary objectives, including the prevention of anti-social conduct and compensating accident victims. The tort law has been failing since it has been leaving many victims engaged uncompensated while making excessive compensation to some victims already paid by other insurance sources. The reason is it takes too long to put the payment in the hands of the victims. History accounts that the parliamentary systems should reform the liability regulations or even handling of the claims. Also though the pressure is growing to break the traditional procedure of personalized proceedings based on the common law perception of every case, the justice schemes have the judicial creativity of handling every presented case.
In the 1980s, a corporate defendant, along with guarantors, subsidized a bold system to tackle group negotiations to settle the asbestos claims presented earlier in the court. However, the system became unable to address the emerging new cases as a result proving the cases as extremely costly. Gradually, the operation became a tool in coordinating the claim defense and, almost in the plaintiff’s lawyers’ eyes, tended to lose its independence. In such a case, the judges tend to show strong creativity reactions by extending the tort obligation scope. The United States has been experiencing tort law reform. The tort reforms movement includes the1980s political changes by lobbyists fighting over applying legal standards in designing defects in products, penalizing damages, the duty to warn, among others.
Another tort reform became experienced in 1986 introduced by the Reagan Administration on returning 1950s tort reform, which protected the interests of the defendants. Last but not limited to the changes that occurred in the US; The pressure to justice scheme in developing administrative procedures to tackle claims. The reform movement included a national arbitration system for good-related accidents as well as a federal product obligation statute to be useful in all streets aiming to reform judicial remedies. The reform customized an alternative method in diverting away most claims from the court.
Currently, In the United States, activists and economists pinpoint the financial limits to the tort systems as much as they become supported by obligated insurance. The support of the insurance organization is limited. Therefore, the limits results to bankruptcy reforms legalized to include defendants in the tort litigation context, and by the constitutional limits on liability endorsed in the law governing the companies. In other words, the tort regulations never assume responsibilities of producing the money required to meet its demands. The rules articulate that the defendant should pay, however, with bankruptcy as the implicit restriction on liability after the exceeding of the insurance cover. In mass tort and catastrophe cases, the money available may be exhausted long before the full compensation of tort law has been achieved.
Strengths and weaknesses of the three mechanisms for ensuring US Food Safety for consumers
For decades, in the United States, there have been a vast number of consumers class actions leveled against both manufacturers and vendors. A specific example such kind of litigation was the food-labeling claim brought against yogurt-maker Chobani in California. The plaintiffs appealed that the yogurt labeling stating it is natural was unlawful. Instead, it confined concentrated or even dehydrated vegetables and fruit juices. In the case, Judge Lucy Koh in the federal District dismissed the lawsuit of the plaintiffs. The judge prejudiced the clam of the basis that the plaintiffs lacked personnel to support the allegation that vegetables and fruits in making the yogurt were unnatural.
Furthermore, the complainants could not explain the unnatural ingredients in the products. Although Chobani prevailed, the plaintiffs stilled appealed. Besides, defended against the speculation, non-injury claims are always costly, and the costs tend to pass along in the method of more exceptional retail prices. Consequently, the lush abuse of state consumer protection acts (CPAs) hurts consumers, thus leading to new forms of mechanisms and reforms in the food security safety sectors in the entire country. The tools introduced in the food safety scheme included new regulation, consumer education, surveillance, research, and development, among others.
Regulation system
Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) Systems
The representatives of Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and relative organization in making the transaction shifts to hazard prevention scheme is creditable. The scientific community has widely agreed that the use of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point techniques in the production of the food, processing, preparation, and even distribution is the best method to enhance food safety in the country and worldwide. The program uses a systematic technique in identifying microbiological, physical, chemical hazards in the supply of foods along with the establishment of critical control sectors of eliminating the identified risks.
In 1998, Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) regulated over 500 employees in 312 big poultry and meat processing plants to implement Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point systems. Within two years, the FSIS requested medium and small processing plants in implementing HACCP programs, which turned up to 6,100 in number. After three months, the FSIS inspectors enforced actions on the thirteen processing plants which failed to achieve the HACCP programs. In response to the necessity of training members of the poultry and meat industries, the global meat and poultry Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point alliance was designed in Texas A&M College. The coalition encompasses industry alliances which united with universities, professional organizations, and federal agencies.
The notable strength HACCP system is that, when fully implemented, significantly increases the effectiveness of food security systems. It has the capability of enhancing food safety from the producer to the consumer. Moreover, the program carries with it some benefits, including proper utilization of the resources throughout the food chain, profitable to the food industry, appropriate response in handling food safety matters. HACCP improves the responsibility and the control functionality of food processing in the industry. An appropriately executed HACCP approach leads to greater participation of food managers to understand and ensure food safety. Hence the managers become renewed and motivated in work.
Research and Development
Federal Research Actions and Technological Development
Food safety is one of reasonably research and development efforts done by the agencies which include: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under Health and Human Services (DHHS) department; the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) of the Department of Commerce, and lastly the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The agencies have engaged in research and develop an identified issue of food safety. The agencies portray strengths through monitoring and conducting epidemiological studies concerning human and animal illnesses along with human pathogens on the farm.
For example, USDA, FDA, and CDC, among others, tend to cooperate with various states in establishing a local or even international infrastructure for levels of household researches and monitoring of the human well-being. Moreover, the agencies have the ability to respond quickly to arising changes in the research and development activities. For instance, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), have the management system of responding fast on any changes monitored by FSIS agency, which include enhancing, sustaining, or even expansion of the food safety programs. In regard, the agencies prevent any claim which might arise from the consumer concerning food safety matters.
Also, the agency schemes have the strength of adopting the new technological advancement to improve food safety, thus eliminating the potentiality of harm if not evaluated. The irradiation approval decision by the 1958 legislature serves as an excellent example of agencies adopting the technologies. Irradiation became authorized to a food additive regardless of lacking evidence that it adds nothing to the product. Further research in America, among other countries, recorded that irradiation is a safe additive and is the only way to reduce the exposure hazards to foodborne pathogens. The countries continued to contribute towards the development approaches of using irradiation on foods.
In 1982, some of the agencies, such as the FDA, agreed to use the technology of irradiation for spices. In 1985, the agency used the irradiation to control pork borne trichinosis. Food and Drug Administration established the highest radiation doses to be used in irradiation applications and regulated the labeling of irradiated foods. Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) formulated rules to improve the irradiation technology on pork, beef, and poultry products. The procedural adoption of the irradiation technology attracted more customers to have the product, as well as the industries, develop economically.
Surveillance System
Human and Animal Illness
Surveillance for human foodborne diseases is primarily the responsibility of state and local health departments, which are required or authorized to collect and investigate reports of infectious diseases. Although specific reporting requirements vary by state, such frequent and severe bacterial foodborne pathogens as Salmonella, Shigella, Campylobacter, and E. coli 0157:H7 are reportable in most states. Also, recognized outbreaks of foodborne disease are notifiable in most states regardless of cause. Investigations are conducted to identify cases of illness, determine their sources, and control outbreaks. Responsibility for the first study of individual cases or explosions may lie with local and state health departments. This system results in regional disparities in the probability of detecting outbreaks and may affect the thoroughness of an investigation.
On a national level, the CDC collects data from the states on the occurrence of specific pathogens such as Salmonella, Shigella, Campylobacter, and E. coli. It collects summary data on foodborne disease outbreaks investigated by local and state health departments. CDC conducts field investigations of foodborne diseases only at the request of state health departments. CDC also plays a role in coordinating investigations of multistate or international outbreaks. The FDA and FSIS are called into studies when the safety of food in their jurisdictions is questioned. The FDA and FSIS are charged with ensuring that foods implicated in a foodborne illness outbreak and traveling in interstate commerce are removed from the market. Most recalls of food products regulated by the FDA and FSIS, whether requested by the agency or initiated by the private entity, are carried out voluntarily by the businesses that manufacture, distribute, or sell these products. By statute, they must use different methods to achieve that charge; FSIS uses its recall authority, and FDA requests voluntary recalls of hazardous food by industry.
The Food Safety from Farm to Table: National Food-Safety Initiative (Appendix C) includes plans to develop elements of an improved foodborne-disease surveillance system. Although it is intended to eventually provide a “new early warning system for foodborne disease surveillance,” it takes only the first steps toward such a system. The first component of the system is the Active Foodborne Disease Surveillance System, known as FoodNet. This is a collaborative effort among the CDC, FDA, USDA, and states participating in the CDC’s Emerging Infections Program. FoodNet is designed to conduct population-based active surveillance of seven bacterial foodborne pathogens (Salmonella, Shigella, Campylobacter, E. coli 0157: H7, Listeria, Yersinia, and Vibrio) and determine-through a series of surveys of laboratories, physicians, and the population-the magnitude of diarrheal illnesses and the proportion of these illnesses that are attributable to foods. FoodNet provides one model for studying emerging infections; however, its current focus is limited to these seven routinely identifiable pathogens (Appendix C).
A second significant activity of the National Food Safety Initiative is the National Molecular Surveillance Network, or PulseNet, established by CDC in collaboration with state laboratories of public health. In 1996, standard protocols for subtyping E. coli 0157:H7 with pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) were developed to more accurately identify routes of pathogen transmission. PFGE technology allows public health laboratories in different regions of the United States to share information through a national computer network. Epidemiologists can now trace and detect foodborne pathogens up to five times faster than previous surveillance methods (DHHS, 1998).
FSIS surveillance activities include monitoring programs for Listeria monocytogenes in cooked and ready-to-eat meat and poultry products; E. coli 0157:H7 in raw ground beef products, imported products, and food in retail establishments; and Salmonella in egg products.
Also, FSIS conducts “swab tests on-premises” to detect antibiotics in meat and poultry and “calf antibiotic and sulfa tests.” These systems are being replaced with a new surveillance tool, the ”fast antimicrobial-screen test.” The FSIS also operates a nationwide “residue violation information system” to check for drug, pesticide, and other chemical residues in slaughtered livestock and poultry and in processed eggs.
FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine has a new monitoring system to determine trends in antimicrobial resistance and changes in susceptibility. Samples from diagnostic laboratories, slaughter plants, farms, and public health settings are taken and compared for relative differences (Stephen Sundlof, Center for Veterinary Medicine, FDA, personal communication to the committee, March 1998).
The National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS) program, under the auspices of APHIS, is designed to serve as a comprehensive system to measure the incidence of and determine the trends in and economic burden of diseases in food-producing animals on local, state, and national bases. The NAHMS is administered by the Center for Epidemiology and Animal Health and is closely associated with surveys and data from food animal commodity groups and state departments of agriculture.
USDA requires that certain animal diseases be reported, and each state also has its listing of reportable diseases. USDA operates a national diagnostic laboratory reference center in two locations-the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, and the Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at Plum Island, New York. These centers monitor disease-eradication programs, some imported animal products, and reported occurrences of animal diseases across the country. A national infrastructure of animal health diagnostic laboratories across the country, associated with colleges of veterinary medicine or state departments of agriculture, provides an additional avenue for animal disease surveillance that is not federally mandated. These laboratories are excellent sources of information for identifying disease trends and newly emerging disease conditions.