FDA Targeted As Food-Safety Concerns Rise

WASHINGTON _ It was a frank answer to a blunt question about the Food and Drug Administration’s ability to protect America’s food supply.

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, ticked off an FDA advisory panel’s recent findings that food inspections in America had declined by 78 percent since the 1970s _ even as imports surged.

“Are these statements true?” Dingle asked.

“I believe they are,” replied Steven Sundlof, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety, who testified during an Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing April 24.

Dingell and other members of Congress are planning a major push to overhaul the nation’s food-safety system, and the FDA is the primary target.

One in four Americans suffer food-borne illnesses each year, and 85 percent of those illnesses are associated with FDA-regulated foods, according to a report last week by the nonprofit Trust for America’s Health.

The report concluded that the United States needs to do a better job of monitoring foreign imports, something that both Congress and the FDA have in mind _ though to far different degrees. Legislation that Dingell and others plan to introduce shortly is expected to propose:

_Giving FDA the authority to recall tainted food, something that the nation’s food-safety agency now lacks.

_Creating a registry of all food facilities _ places where food is processed or packaged _ that operate in the United States or ship food here.

_Requiring periodic FDA inspections of food facilities in the U.S. and those abroad that ship food here.

_Imposing registration fees for any facility producing food for Americans’ consumption in hopes of generating about $600 million to improve food safety, primarily through inspections.

_Banning imports at ports that lack FDA labs.

The FDA has said it would support having recall authority, after opposing such power in the past. But the agency also says that letting private laboratories test imports would work better than requiring FDA inspections at foreign sites.

“If everybody took that (inspection) approach, everybody would be inspecting every other country … I don’t see how anybody could be producing food,” Sundlof said.

Supporters in Congress acknowledge that costly changes in FDA operations could be difficult to achieve, particularly those _ like registration fees _ that would be passed on to consumers struggling already with higher food costs.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., one of Congress’s main food-safety advocates, said he’s not optimistic.

“Sadly, I think it will take more scandals over Chinese imports to force this issue,” he said. “Last year it was contaminated pet food, antifreeze in toothpaste and lead paint in toys. I’m afraid there’ll have to be more casualties in the war to stop some of these deadly Chinese imports.”

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(c) 2008, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

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