Has Eating Become More Dangerous?

With all the food recalls that have been surfacing in our food supply, how safe are we really about what we consume?
Tainted food appearing in our food supply has left a number of people to become ill, one lady paralyzed, and a California resident under life support for three months after drinking unpasteurized milk. It is said that our nation's food supply is safer now than it has ever been, but can these rising cases be justified by this excuse? Is our nation doing enough to keep us safe from food-borne diseases?
Not long ago, salmonella was found in a large portion of the nation's peanut butter, having to be quickly pulled back and making it one of the largest recalls in America. With this just being one case, it sounds to me that not enough is being done to improve what goes into our food supply.
A vast number of our food is imported and packaged in other countries, leaving little or no eyes left to inspect what is being brought into our nation and ending up in our refrigerators. An estimated 76 million Americans contract food-bourne illness each year.
The Food and Drug Administration only regulates 80% of the food we are consuming. It has been promised that an intensive focus will be put on the safety of our food, though mainly because of all the money companies lose due to the recalls.
While now posing a greater risk, food has always contained germs. As technology strengthens hopefully our food will grow safer, but this will not mean that we will not see more food scares in our nation, with machines doing most of the work, the malfunctioning of machines is unavoidable.
Not eating is not an option, and many have turned to organic foods while we, as humans, need to nurture and feed our bodies everyday. I guess eating is a risk we will have to endure while we wait for a better way to keep our food safe.

(This article has been summarized. For the original and full article, please see the link below).
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/health/11food.html?_r=1&ref=dining