Florida and other states can do more to test for and root out food contaminants according to First Lady Casey DeSantis.
During an appearance on Fox and Friends Weekend, DeSantis said that testing baby formulae for heavy metals was just the first of many moves in that direction, expressing confidence that other states will join Florida in doing the job that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will not.
“I’m calling around to all the states. I had a great conversation with the First Lady of Oklahoma. I’m like, man, what if we divide and conquer? What if Oklahoma and Georgia and Arkansas and everybody gets together and we start on a state level being force multipliers to the federal MAGA movement and the MAHA movement, then we can try to ensure that there’s some accountability on the front,” DeSantis said Saturday.
Florida’s Department of Health recently tested 24 formulas for contaminants, with 16 of them having at least one heavy metal that exceeded federal standards. Mercury was the most ubiquitous, followed by arsenic, cadmium, and lead.
The reason these adulterants are in food, DeSantis said, is because the federal government isn’t testing for them before they are marketed and sold.
“There really isn’t any preventative testing as it pertains to the foods before they wind up in our food supply. The FDA, they do a lot of postwork, right? If somebody finds a problem, there’s bacteria, salmonella, they’ll go in and investigate, but there are … thousands of products on the market. So to go in and test all of them, they would say is difficult. That’s where the states come in. That’s where we’re leading in the free state of Florida. We want to go out, proactively test baby formula, other things, like baby food or cereals. Get accountability on the front end so that we can encourage companies to find ways to not have any harmful chemicals in our foods.”
