We don't really have any that protect the food supply from farm to table. We have a food safety system that's piecemeal, largely divided between two agencies that don't talk to each other very much. Neither agency can enforce regulations from the farm to the table.

Restaurants that have health-conscious consumers will pay attention to this.

The standard four food groups are based on American agricultural lobbies. Why do we have a milk group? Because we have a National Dairy Council. Why do we have a meat group? Because we have an extremely powerful meat lobby.

Here we have the great irony of modern nutrition: at a time when hundreds of millions of people do not have enough to eat, hundreds of millions more are eating too much and are overweight or obese.

If we have a food supply that we can't trust, that has enormous implications for the way we view government, for the way we trust business, and for our international trade relations.

One way in which we can encourage the Chinese government to take more vigorous action to control food safety in their country is by just saying we're not going to buy Chinese foods until they get their system cleaned up. Admittedly it's a difficult system to get under control because an astonishing percentage - maybe 80 percent - of the foods in China are produced in small backyard operations.

The general public believes that if a health claim is on the label the government backs that up, ... This sells food products, no question.