Lawmaker: USDA shouldn’t cover food safety. (MSNBC)

A lawmaker called Tuesday for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be stripped of its responsibility for food safety in the wake of the nation’s largest-ever meat recall.

The agency’s twin mandates of promoting the nation’s agriculture and monitoring it for safety have become blurred, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro said.

“Food safety ought to be of a high enough priority in this nation that we have a single agency that deals with it and not an agency that is responsible for promoting a product, selling a product and then as an afterthought dealing with how our food supply is safe,” said DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who chairs the House subcommittee responsible for the USDA’s funding.

Hard to say if a new bureaucratic arm of the federal government is the answer, but it’s clear the present system is broken. The market has decided: we don’t care if you die.