(AP) -- U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer is urging the Food and Drug Administration to implement a plan to address recent reports of rat-infested warehouses that supply food to restaurants.
Schumer says Sunday that the FDA sent warning letters to 90 food facilities across the country in 2014, citing unsanitary conditions such as insects, rodent feces and dead rats and mice.
He's calling on FDA to increase the regularity of inspections, increase fines for violations, and create an easily searchable database for restaurants and consumers to see which food processing and storage facilities have poor sanitation records.
Schumer said retail food vendors should have a clear way of knowing if the products they are buying are from a facility with known violations cited by the FDA.