By Joseph S. Enoch
ConsumerAffairs.com Congressional Correspondent
February 8, 2007
The year 2006 saw two major E. coli outbreaks in the U.S. and a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report suggests food safety is one of the nation's high-risk areas.
Every year about 76 million people contract food-borne illnesses in the U.S., in which about 5,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
While E. coli outbreaks are dangerous, the report outlines the potential dangers, both microbial and terrorist-related, that lie in the nation's porous agriculture inspection system.
Although there have been no major outbreaks or agro-terrorist attacks yet, David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States said at a House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee hearing today that agencies need to be proactive, rather than responsive to the problem.
The number one problem the report found in the nation's food inspection is the fragmentation of responsibilities.
Although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are responsible for the majority of food inspection, there are 13 other agencies that also share the responsibilities.
"The patchwork nature of the federal oversight of food safety calls into question whether the government can plan more strategically to inspect food production processes, identify and react more quickly to any outbreaks of contaminated food, and focus on achieving results to promote the safety and integrity of the nation's food supply," according to the GAO report.
The report also questions whether the current patchwork is financially efficient. The GAO uncovered the complicated, subtle differences that separate the tasks of one agency from another. For example, the USDA is responsible for inspecting packaged meat sandwiches with one slice of bread while the FDA inspects sandwiches with two or more slices.
The report found many instances of overlapping duties, wasting taxpayer dollars.
While some duties were overlapped, others were nearly overlooked. For example, the report notes that 80 percent of seafood is imported but one percent is inspected.
While neither the report nor Walker would suggest dissolving the 15 agencies' duties into one, he did say, "There's no doubt in my mind that we need to streamline. We need to consolidate what we have right now."
The bipartisan attendance at today's Agriculture Subcommittee meeting seemed to embrace the report with open arms, but any legislative action, which would possibly require massive changes, is likely a long ways off.
Recalls Ineffective
But one simple way to begin mending the bungled system is to give the FDA and USDA greater recall powers and to improve the effectiveness of recalls, Walker suggested.
Currently, the FDA and USDA have no power to recall, with the exception of infant formula.
All recalls are voluntary and both agencies have no data on the effectiveness of recalls or whether all the stores and supply chains involved even find out about recalls. This problem was highlighted with the E.coli spinach outbreak where stores across the nation were still selling spinach, leaving the consumer responsible for knowing about the dangers.
Walker estimated that only 10 percent of a recalled food product is actually pulled off shelves.
