WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration took its first step yesterday toward overhauling food safety regulations that have been blamed for a steady stream of outbreaks and product recalls.

The new proposals -- recommended by a working group that President Barack Obama created in March -- emphasize prevention, enforcement and improving the government's response time to food-safety outbreaks.

"There are few responsibilities more basic or more important for the government than making sure the food our families eat is safe," Vice President Joseph R. Biden said at a White House news conference, where he was joined by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "American families have enough to worry about today. They should not have [food safety] as a concern."

Fears about food safety have been spurred by a series of salmonella and E.coli outbreaks in products as varied as peanuts, spinach, tomatoes, pistachios, peppers and, most recently, cookie dough.

Fifteen federal agencies oversee food inspections in a complex and sometimes-bizarre division of labor: The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for produce, while the Department of Agriculture is responsible for meat. As a result, cheese pizzas are inspected by the FDA, while pepperoni pies go to the USDA.

The administration yesterday outlined a variety of measures to prevent the spread of salmonella, a bacteria that causes more than 1 million illnesses each year in the United States.

Among them is a final rule, issued by the FDA, to reduce the contamination in eggs. About 142,000 Americans are infected each year with Salmonella enteritidis from eggs, the result of an infected hen passing along the bacterium. About 30 die.

The FDA will now require that egg producers test regularly for salmonella and buy chicks from suppliers who do the same. Eggs, which now must be refrigerated by wholesalers and retail stores, will have to be refrigerated on the farm and during shipment as well. About half the egg industry is following similar guidelines voluntarily.

The agency estimates that will help reduce the number of related food-borne illnesses by 79,000 a year, or about 60 percent. The new requirements will cost producers about $81 million a year, and add about 1 cent to the cost of a dozen eggs, said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg. Ms. Sebelius said it will save the nation about $1.4 billion a year in medical expenses.

Steve Steingart, the Allegheny County Health Department's acting chief of its food safety program, is a past president of the international Association of Food and Drug Officials, which was asked to be part of the council that discussed what could be done to reduce salmonella, E. coli and other foodborne disease outbreaks.

He said he had hoped that the federal panel would recommend the new position of FDA deputy commissioner of foods. "We've always talked about the need for federal leadership," he said, because that could lead to tighter collaboration of federal, state and local agencies like the county health department.