GAO Calls for Reform of Food-Safety System

Consolidation of responsibilities at FDA urged

By Scott Hume, Executive Managing Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 8/1/2004

Critics of the federal government’s fragmented oversight of food safety and food inspections gained a new and powerful ally when the General Accounting Office urged Congress to consolidate most responsibilities for the federal food-safety system under a single agency.

In 1992, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) labeled the current multi-agency approach “a bureaucratic tangle” and introduced legislation mandating creation of a single federal food-safety agency. The bill never came to a Senate vote. Calls from public-advocacy groups for reform have been louder in the wake of a series of foodborne-illness outbreaks traced to tainted produce served at restaurants.

In May, Lawrence Dyckman, GAO director for natural resources and environment, sent a letter to Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-Va.), chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Civil Service and Agency Organization. The letter amplifies on his testimony in March, when he said a system “with diffused and overlapping lines of authority and responsibility cannot effectively and efficiently accomplish its mission and meet new food-safety challenges.”

The current system, which splits food-safety powers—with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) monitoring meat, poultry and eggs, and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) overseeing imports and seafood—“results in divided, and perhaps diluted, responsibility for ensuring a safe food supply and protecting the public health,” Dyckman says in his letter. “Arbitrary jurisdictional lines of authority can make the current food-safety inspection system ... unresponsive to the needs of the public.”

The GAO’s primary recommendation to Congress is to consolidate most food-safety functions “under a single independent agency,” according to Dyckman. The GAO argues that the FDA is the better choice for that role because USDA also “promotes agriculture, and that may be perceived as a conflict of interest.”

Although USDA has three times as many inspectors, he notes, “FDA, as a public health agency, has a mission that aligns well with food safety, and it has established scientific expertise in preventing foodborne illness.”

However, GAO’s position is that “it might be desirable to keep functions such as foodborne-illness surveillance in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Dyckman says Congress’ other urgent priority should be creation of “comprehensive, uniform and risk-based food-safety legislation,” written after “identifying the most important food-safety problems across the entire food system.”