Food Safety News reports today that there is no timetable for moving the nomination of Elisabeth Hagen to the Senate floor. Hagen, currently the chief medical officer at USDA, is the nominee to lead the Food Safety and Inspection Service, the USDA agency responsible for ensuring the safety of meat and poultry products.

In a new blog post written for The Huffington Post, OMB Watch Executive Director Gary Bass finds similarities among the BP oil spill, the Massey Energy mine explosion, and Toyota's massive vehicle recall. "In each instance, businesses with poor safety records have continued to operate in a system of voluntary regulation," Bass writes.

Bagged, precut lettuce may pose additional safety risks and challenges for regulators, the Washington Post reports. An ongoing E. coli outbreak connected to precut lettuce has sickened at least 23 people in four states.

Without a Senate-confirmed head, rulemaking at the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has ground to a halt. FSIS, the agency responsible for ensuring the safety of meat, poultry, and egg products, made progress on only one significant regulation in the past six months, according to the semiannual Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions published Monday.