WASHINGTON — Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) released a new report that identifies major gaps in the nation’s food safety system, including obsolete laws, misallocation of resources, and inconsistencies among major food safety agencies.
“Our goal should be reducing the number of Americans who get sick from food-borne illness. But we can’t adequately protect people from contaminated foods if we continue to use 100 year-old practices,” said Jeff Levi, executive director of TFAH. “We need to bring food safety into the 21st century. We have the technology. We’re way past due for a smart and strategic upgrade.”
Some problems outlined in the report, Fixing Food Safety: Protecting America’s Food from Farm-to-Fork, include:
- The U.S. food safety system has not been fundamentally modernized in over 100 years. The bulk of federal food safety funds are spent on outdated practices of inspecting every poultry, beef and pork carcass, even though changing threats and modern agriculture practices and technology make this an unproductive use of government resources.
- Inadequate resources are spent on fighting modern bacteria threats, such as trying to reduce Salmonella or dangerous strains of E. coli.
- An estimated 85 percent of known food-borne illness outbreaks are associated with foods regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but the agency receives less than half of the federal funding for food safety.
- In the past 3 years, the main food safety function at FDA has lost 20 percent of its science staff and 600 inspectors. Gaps in current inspection practices mean acts of agroterrorism — such as contamination of wheat gluten or botulism — could go undetected until they are widespread.
- While 15 federal agencies are involved in food safety, the efforts are fragmented and no one agency has ultimate authority or responsibility for food safety. For instance, the FDA regulates frozen pizza, but if the pizza is topped with 2 percent or more of cooked meat or poultry, then the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) at the U.S. Department of Agriculture becomes the regulatory agency.
TFAH calls for a series of actions to help the nation modernize the food safety system by using strategic inspection practices and state-of-the-art surveillance. While many of the recommendations are focused on government actions, the report finds that fixing food safety will require a collaborative effort by food producers, processors, distributors, retailers and consumers, combined with strong leadership from the federal, state and local governments. Some of the recommendations include:
- Repeal outdated end-product and processing plant inspection mandates and shift the emphasis of inspection practices to the prevention of outbreaks and illnesses through the entire food production process and supply chain.
- Create mechanisms that allow inspection practices to keep pace with changes in the industry.
- Establish uniform performance standards and best practices that are enforceable through actions including detention and recall authority and civil penalty authority.
- Require food safety education for commercial food handlers.
- Strengthen the FDA with increased funding and aligning resources with high risk threats, with the long-term goal of realigning all federal food safety functions.