I'm trying to take back control of our family's food supply. Yet every day there's a new crisis -- every day there's something new and terrifying popping out of some other area of the food chain that makes me buggy.

This is not new, mind you. That's why the FDA went into business in the first place: the practice of adulterating foods (sometimes with toxic or nonedible substances that looked similiar and added weight to the scales) is as old as time itself. What I don't understand is why they've stopped doing their job.

I have my suspicions. Some of them are political, but setting those to the side, let's consider issues of scale. Is the monitorining of any country's food supply too large of a job for any one agency? Where does personal responsibility come into the picture? We assume that if the food is for sale in the grocery, it is safe for us. Is that any longer a valid assumption? If you look at the millions and millions of tons of imported food, how is it even feasible that it all be checked?

There are currently congressional hearings centering on this topic, but they are receiving little if any media coverage. I am becoming increasingly convinced that this is not a problem that can be fixed from the top down, but must instead come from the bottom up.