Some 30, 000 Americans go to the emergency room each year because of severe food allergies, said Dr. Stefano Luccioli of the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Food Additive Safety.

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The flooding shut down the office that normally watched over food safety for those regions.

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Congress' watchdog agency, the General Accounting Office, called for consolidating government responsibility for food safety under one agency.

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Referring to the horsemeat controversy, British Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted: "this is completely unacceptable - this isn't about food safety but about proper food labeling (and) confidence in retailers, " according to his press office's Twitter account.

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