20-Year Prospect

20-Year Prospect

We sincerely hope that the career of FDA scientist sticks around for a long, long, long time – too many corporations out there are totally okay with putting people in their Soylent Green.

Take, for example, the infamous Melamine Pet Food Recall of 2007. So what if no humans died? Dogs and cats are the better-behaved, no-back-talk children of America.

When the FDA learned that animals were expiring of kidney failure, it went into testing overdrive; its scientists eventually found melamine in more than 130 samples of pet food and wheat gluten.

While protecting our pets from killer food manufactured in China is a worthy mission, FDA scientists are also responsible for ensuring the safety of hundreds of thousands of other products...with the help of about 13,000 other employees and an agency budget of around $4 billion.

Do you know what else cost $4 billion? All of the surplus military equipment the federal government has distributed to police departments across the United States over the last several years.

So, yeah, while FDA scientists are super-duper important, the FDA isn't particularly well-funded. Here's hoping the money lasts long enough to keep FDA scientists around for a few more decades.