At the time of this writing, inspectors from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are at work monitoring seafood safety in areas affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Finger-pointing continues and there is now talk on the news of criminal prosecutions. The full economic effect of the disaster is not yet known—the oil spill remains a top headline and will no doubt be in the news for months to come, if not years.

If history is any indication, a tragic event of this proportion will renew the public’s appetite for government oversight and regulation. This would likely be the case even if the FDA were not so directly involved in cleaning up the mess—literally and figuratively. But in this case, the sea change at large in our society (no pun intended), is a front-of-mind issue in FDA halls. Nobody at the FDA should be expected to now make excuses for aggressive oversight of quality operations—whether in food processing plants or pharmaceutical manufacturing operations. The public is rightfully outraged.

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