This salmonella outbreak is just the latest -- and it represents the full-scale breakdown of a patchwork food safety system -- a dysfunctional federal agency in the FDA unable to perform its mission and protect the American public.
The patchwork safety net created in the decades after World War II truly is shriveling, and there will be rewards for the party that comes up with a convincing solution.
At least eight states have let fighters enter the ring with fraudulent or insufficient medical examinations in recent years, interviews and records show, a pattern of neglect nurtured by a patchwork system of safety.
Oddly, the regulators sometimes agree; the rules and practices governing reactor safety, they say, are a patchwork.
These included relatively small programs, including one health plan and one academic medical center, and three larger programs implemented by safety-net institutions, entities that provide a patchwork of services to the uninsured, under-insured and indigent populations who would otherwise have little access to health care services.
The current safety oversight of the cosmetics industry is a patchwork of weak federal, state, and industry regulations.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's rules are a patchwork that needs to be reorganized and integrated into a new structure to improve safety, the agency's staff told the five members of the commission on Tuesday at a meeting.
Safety experts say that the industry and regulators rely far too much on a patchwork of rules that are largely reactive: each time a problem in one part of the plane is found, inspectors add that area to their checklists.
Instead, China's safety net for the elderly resembles what Americans had before the New Deal: a patchwork of state-based programs with uneven rules and few provisions for people who crossed state lines for work or retirement.
A patchwork quilt of vineyards?
