FDA Chief: Food Safety Needs Radical Changes

By Elizabeth Weise and Julie Schmit

The Food and Drug Administration needs a major reorganization to meet the food-safety needs of the future, FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach told a House committee Tuesday.

"If we continue the way we are today, we will be inadequate," he said. "The FDA must radically and rapidly change."

Yet the FDA gave the committee, which hammered von Eschenbach on the agency’s shortcomings, few details as to how it will reorganize. Von Eschenbach says that the plans are still being worked out, but that key components would include enhancing prevention and inspections, here and abroad, a greater risk-based focus on imported foods and perhaps new regulations.

Recent food-safety cases linked to U.S.-grown spinach, lettuce and peanut butter, pet food tainted with adulterated ingredients from China and contaminated Chinese seafood imports have raised serious concerns about the FDA’s ability to police the food supply, lawmakers said.

One proposal in the FDA’s reorganization is to close seven of 13 FDA laboratories and five regional offices to "consolidate and enhance our assets," von Eschenbach said.

Members of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations warned that the closings may hamper the FDA’s ability to improve food safety.

Von Eschenbach also indicated he may not support mandatory requirements that countries exporting foods regulated by the FDA must have food-safety systems equivalent to the USA’s — as the Department of Agriculture requires for meat imports.

The FDA has opposed such requirements, saying they would be too onerous to implement for the more than 100 countries that export FDA-regulated food to the USA.

He also said the FDA may need power to order food recalls if companies don’t voluntarily do them in a timely manner. Currently, the FDA cannot order recalls but can pressure companies.

The FDA oversees about 10 million food imports a year but can inspect less than 1%, down from 8% in 1992, when imports were less common. Many say the FDA needs more funds, as it regulates about 80% of the nation’s food supply.

William Hubbard, a former associate commissioner of the FDA, told the panel that the FDA has lost 1,000 positions over the past decade — most in food-safety programs. He says the agency needs to at least double its food-safety personnel.

Committee investigators probing the FDA’s record found importers tried to hide that some seafood from Asia was rotten, sought ports of entry where products are less likely to be inspected and mislabeled products to avoid inspection.