Bush Boosts Food-Safety Budgets

Impact of mad cow disease incident is clear in research and testing funds

By Scott Hume, Executive Managing Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 3/15/2004

The $2.4 trillion fiscal year 2005 (Oct. 1, 2004, to Sept. 30, 2005) budget President Bush sent to Congress last month is heavy on funding for food-safety and food-security measures.

While many federal agencies would get budget increases of less than 1%—and some face net reductions—the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) receive substantial new funding for food-safety initiatives. For FDA, the president requests a total budget of $1.8 billion, an 8.8% increase over fiscal year 2004.

Of that increase, $65 million is earmarked for “food defense” programs, including $35 million for establishment of a joint FDA-Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) Emergency Response Network of laboratories to analyze food for bioterrorism. Another $7 million in increased funding will expand FDA inspections of domestic and imported food.

The USDA’s proposed $82 billion budget represents a $4 billion or 5% increase. It includes $381 million for implementation of a Food and Agriculture Defense Initiative, in part funding expanded research on emerging animal diseases.

The FSIS budget gets a $61 million bump to $952 million. This, USDA says, will provide for an expanded and better-trained 7,690-person food-safety inspector force and permit additional public education on safe food handling. FSIS also gets $4 million to better monitor compliance with regulations related to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. USDA’s Agricultural Research Service gets $5 million to develop BSE-testing technologies.