FY 2011 Appropriations: Food Safety Outlook

Following weeks of debate, preparation for a government shutdown, and midnight deals, with just over half of the year left, Congress finally passed a Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 appropriations bill and the President signed it into law on April 15th. Amid political tension and a growing national debt, the bill did not provide a windfall of food safety funding. However, in the face of significant funding cuts in other areas, both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) could have fared much worse.  The final bill contained cuts of nearly $40 million across the government.
 

FDA, faced with implementing the Food Safety Modernization Act (at an estimated cost of $1.4 billion), actually saw a slight increase over the FY 2010 appropriation. The final bill provided FDA with $350 million over what was originally in the House proposal (H.R. 1). Based on the language in the bill alone, it is not possible to determine exactly how much of the $3.7 billion FDA budget will be devoted to food safety. However, the two main centers involved in food safety, the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) and the Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) were both spared cuts and received a slight increase in the FY 2011 continuing resolution. While the final bill does not give FDA nearly the resources requested to be on track for full implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act and carry out the new mandated inspection frequencies, at the very least, it does not set the Agency back further. Implementing the new legislation on a limited budget will require FDA to prioritize implementation, likely establishing the preventive controls regulations and import safety programs, and do more with less to move from legislation to regulations. After all writing regulations are considerably less expensive than enforcing them.

FSIS was not immune to the cuts in the final continuing resolution. The Agency was funded at $1 billion in FY 2011, a reduction of $10 million from the FY 2010 level. However, the cuts to FSIS do not affect the meat, poultry, and egg product inspection activities of the agency.

Read the full Outlook.