WASHINGTON – Describing government’s failure to inspect 95 percent of food processing plants as “a hazard to the public health,” President Obama promised Saturday to bolster and reorganize the nation’s fractured food-safety system.

“In the end, food safety is something I take seriously, not just as your president, but as a parent,” Obama said in his weekly address.

The call for fundamental changes in the nation’s food-protection system follows a massive salmonella outbreak in peanut products that has sickened more than 700 people, killed nine — including three Minnesotans — and led to one of the largest recalls in U.S. history.

Obama said he will ask Congress for $1 billion in new funds to add inspectors and modernize laboratories.