Some of the major factors include:

As you also know, we’re using a 100 year old law; food production, distribution and consumption have changed dramatically and we need revamped if not new legislation.
While FDA and FSIS try to perform as public health agencies, they are basically regulatory agencies whose lawyers [no offense meant and present company excepted] make sure they don’t exceed their authority to prevent them from getting sued (primarily by food producers; rarely by consumer interest groups but increasingly frequently by counsel representing victims).

In my opinion, FSIS has a serious conflict of interest being in the Agriculture Department whose mission is to foster agriculture. This adds a lot of institutional and political inertia when FSIS tries to change things. That's why I'm in favor of a single food agency with a single focus on public health.

While food safety science isn’t rocket science, there are a lot of unknowns because the data hasn’t been collected yet. A decade ago, FSIS had a modest research program which was â€Å"donated� to ARS which isn’t really all that interested in carrying out the purportedly â€Å"unsexy� research needed to answer simple questions like â€Å"Could you ship samples (perhaps in broth) in heated boxes rather than cold boxes to that enrichment growth could start right away ?� so that by the time the sample got to the lab, it would be closer to completion.

Don’t blame all the FSIS employees; they are only as good as their top management and the administration. We need to fix the system.

Keep up the good fight.