President Obama is promising a "complete review" of the Food and Drug Administration following the salmonella outbreak involving peanut butter. To date, the outbreak has made more than 500 people ill and is linked to 8 deaths.

The New York Times posed the question today of whether or not irradiation should be more widely used in the U.S. to help prevent such outbreaks. Our experts say not so fast. While irradiation will knock down bacteria such as Salmonella and E. coli to very low levels, typically it doesn't kill all bacteria in an irradiated food product. If any bacteria survive, there is the danger that they could multiply again under the right conditions. While this new technology may have great health implications, it can be used as a mask for good hygiene practices by cleaning up a process at the end of the line rather than at its root causes.

We continue to report on the salmonella outbreak, and have called on the President to appoint a new FDA commisioner to address problems of food contamination and prevent further outbreaks. “FDA must inspect food production facilities more frequently than once every ten years on average, especially when a problem is identified in an industry,” stated Jean Halloran, Director of Food Policy Initiatives at Consumers Union.

Read more about irradiation, and see our Safety bloggers full coverage of the salmonella outbreak. And we'd like to hear from you. What are you thoughts on the outbreak? The FDA?