Food safety advocates recommend overhauling inspection system
Despite reassurances from federal officials that the American food supply is among the safest in the world, a number of prominent authorities are urging Congress to revamp the federal food safety inspection system amid growing concerns about both naturally occurring disease and bioterrorism.
In a recent memo to Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va., chairwoman of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Civil Service and Agency Organization, former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said the food safety inspection system is poorly suited to modern threats and that significant consolidation of regulatory and enforcement functions is needed.
Glickman, now director of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, says meat and poultry are generally well regulated, but that other products are not, primarily because the Food and Drug Administration, which is responsible for regulating most other food products, does not have enough resources to do an adequate job. Meat and poultry are regulated by the Agriculture Department.
More than 30 laws administered by 12 agencies operating under 50 interagency agreements govern food safety, according to the General Accounting Office. The Agriculture Department and FDA, which is part of the Health and Human Services Department, have most of the regulatory responsibility and account for most federal spending on food safety.
At a hearing by the subcommittee Tuesday, Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the outbreak of hepatitis A in Pennsylvania last November that killed three people and sickened 555 others provides plenty of evidence that the current system is broken. In that case, green onions imported from Mexico caused the outbreak. The onions came from the same farm that caused a similar outbreak in three states three months earlier-a fact that demonstrates the system lacks adequate safeguards, DeWaal said.
"While the food supply is generally safe, each year tens of millions of Americans become ill and thousands die from eating unsafe food," said Lawrence Dyckman, a senior auditor at GAO, who also testified at the hearing.
The federal government spends about $1.3 billion annually on programs aimed at ensuring the safety of domestic and imported foods, and Dyckman estimates the costs associated with food-borne illness are about $7 billion, including medical costs and productivity losses.
GAO auditors recommend that Congress overhaul existing food safety legislation to establish priorities based on risk, and that responsibility for food safety be consolidated in a single agency or department, a measure auditors believe would improve both effectiveness and efficiency.
Glickman, although he supports consolidation of food safety functions, is not optimistic that such a move is politically feasible.
"Barring a catastrophic food safety event affecting large numbers of Americans, it is doubtful that a political consensus could be reached among the various constituencies and interest groups to give Congress and the White House the political support they will need for such consolidation," Glickman wrote.