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Over the last several years in the U.S., food contamination has become a common occurrence; from the lettuce and spinach contaminated with E. coli and Salmonella in 2006 to the most recent Listeria monocytogenes contamination which forced a recall of more than 286,000 pounds of fresh and frozen beef, pork and poultry, and all the instances in between. Why is this happening? Why isn’t our food supply safe? A new report blames an antiquated and disjointed U.S. food safety system and stresses the need for a major overhaul to bring the system into the twenty-first century.
The report, "Fixing Food Safety: Protecting America’s Food from Farm-to-Fork," released by public health advocacy group Trust for America’s Health, addresses gaps in the U.S. food safety system, which has not been changed in more than a century. Those gaps include out-of-date laws, poor use of resources, and inconsistencies among agencies protecting food safety.
Outdated laws include the existing regulations governing animal slaughter established in 1906, and guidelines for addressing microbial pathogens in food and the regulation of food imports set in 1938. This has led to outdated practices, which in turn has caused poor use of resources. Most of the federal food safety funds are “spent to inspect every poultry, beef and pork carcass, even though changing threats and modern agriculture practices and technology make this an unproductive use of government resources,” the report said. In contrast, not enough money is spent on “fighting modern bacteria threats, such as trying to reduce Salmonella or dangerous strains of E. coli,” it added. Approximately 85 percent of food-borne illness outbreaks are linked to foods regulated by the FDA. Moreover, even though approximately 60 percent of fresh fruits and vegetables and 75 percent of seafood is imported, a mere 1 percent of imported food is inspected.
The number of federal agencies involved in food safety was also criticized in the report. “The major problem with the current food safety system is that no one person is in charge,” Mr. Levi said. “Instead, there are a total of 15 federal agencies that play a role in administering some 30 laws related to food safety.” The USDA Food Safety Inspection Service regulates meat, poultry, and processed egg products, while the FDA regulates everything else. However, the FDA gets less than half of all federal funding for food safety. This year, for example, FDA's food safety allocation is $619 million, compared with $1.07 billion for the USDA. Furthermore, the FDA has received no additional funds to combat deliberate contamination of the food supply since the Bush administration called for a national food-defense effort in 2004, whereas the USDA has received $150 million, according to the report. Over the last three years, the FDA has cut back its science staff by 20 percent and lost 600 food safety inspectors. The gaps in current inspection practices mean that acts of agro-terrorism, such as contamination of wheat gluten or botulism, could go undetected until they are widespread.
The entire system needs to change, said Mr. Levi who thinks that, ultimately, a new federal agency should be responsible for all food safety. “The goal should be to consolidate and align all federal food safety functions into a single agency, to increase effectiveness, responsibility and accountability,” he said. “The agency could then address the food supply as a whole and set priorities accordingly.” The group also recommends doubling the FDA’s food safety funds over the next five years.
Several other recommendations for building a “modern food safety system” include limiting “end-product and processing plant inspections,” shifting the emphasis to the prevention of illnesses and outbreaks through the entire food production process and supply chain; enact procedures that will allow inspection practices to be updated as changes occur in the industry; improve inspection of imported foods and monitoring of international practices; require food safety education for commercial food handlers; and establish standard practices of authority for recall and penalties.
Some of the recommendations are being addressed through various bills now in Congress, but passage of major legislation in this session is unlikely, in Mr. Levi’s opinion. “I’d say the first and most important thing Congress can do is address the funding shortfall at FDA, and that doesn’t require legislation,” he said.
The report coincided with an announcement by the FDA that, over the next several months, it plans to fill more than 600 new positions and “backfill” another 700 that are needed to implement the FDA Amendments Act of 2007 and the Food Protection Plan and Import Safety Plan announced last November. These positions will include biologists, medical officers, statisticians, and investigators, but the announcement was unclear about how many of them would be related to food safety. Commenting on the announcement, Mr. Levi told CIDRAP News, “It appears that a significant portion of those are going to food safety, and that’s very good. The question is whether the budgetary resources will be there to sustain those positions over time, because FDA hasn’t received increases that would sustain those.”
