WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 26, 2007
Despite Food Scares, FDA Cuts Inspections
Former Bush Official Among Critics Who Charge Cuts Threaten Public
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FDA consumer safety officers Dean Cook, left, and Matthew M. Henciak inspect spices at the port of Baltimore in 2000. The FDA has cut the number of inspections to half the levels of three years ago. (AP Photo/FDA)
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The cuts by the Food and Drug Administration come despite a barrage of high-profile food recalls.
"We have a food safety crisis on the horizon," said Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia.
Between 2003 and 2006, FDA food safety inspections dropped 47 percent, according to a database analysis of federal records by The Associated Press.
That's not all that's dropping at the FDA in terms of food safety. The analysis also shows:
"The only difference is now it's worse, because there are more inspections to do — more facilities — and more food coming into America, which requires more inspections," said Tommy Thompson, who as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services pushed to increase the numbers. He's now part of a coalition lobbying to turn around several years of stagnant spending.
The Bush administration's budget request for 2008 includes an additional $10.6 million for food safety at the FDA; the lobbying group said 10 times that increase is needed. Even though the FDA increased its overall spending on food between 2003 and 2006, those increases failed to keep pace with rising personnel costs.
"It's not just outsiders like us who have been watching it for a while. People who worked in the Bush administration are coming out and saying the agency is not working at its current resource levels. It just can't manage the job," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group.
Members of Congress also have renewed the focus on the safety of the nation's food supply amid highly publicized recalls sparked by food poisoning, including last year when E. coli was found to taint fresh spinach sold coast to coast. That outbreak killed three people and sickened nearly 200.
The latest big recall involves peanut butter believed tainted with salmonella, a bacterium found in feces that can cause severe diarrhea. The outbreak has sickened at least 329 people in 41 states since August, federal health officials say.
Food safety experts say it would be impossible to know whether increased numbers of inspectors and inspections would have prevented the outbreak, linked to Peter Pan and Great Value brands made by ConAgra Foods Inc., or other recent food poisoning scares.
The FDA had last inspected ConAgra's peanut butter plant in Sylvester, Ga., in February 2005 and had found no problems, agency spokesman Michael Herndon said.
FDA food inspectors look for filth, decomposition, adulteration with pesticides and industrial chemicals and the illegal use of color or food additives, according to the agency. Firms that produce high-risk foods more susceptible to contamination, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, are supposed to be inspected every year or two.
Inspections also look for sources of possible contamination, such as flies. For instance, inspectors are asked to count flies, as well as how often they land on a food product. They're also told to look for any open doors or damaged window screens that could allow the insects to flit back and forth between the product and, say, a toilet, floor drain or garbage can, according to agency documents.
© MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
This is what happens when take federal agencies that are charged with protecting the American people and fill them with former lobyists from the very industries they are supposed to be protecting us from. Bush and Co. have done this with the FDA and the EPA. As for FEMA and Homeland Security, he's just filled those agencies up with cronies who have little or no experience.
2. The chimps appointees to the FDA are taking good care of us, trust me on this one. Ha! Ha!
3. This does not support the chimps war efforts, or make Halliburton any richer. So why spend money on it?
4. Another prime example of our government wanting to help it's citizens.
Hey, the money for the boondoggle has to come from somwhere, eh?
We eat tainted food so Dubya can chase his windmills in Iraq......
Posted by skyk at 07:39 AM : Feb 27, 2007
Good morning, skyk.
As I often say, the neocons themselves have done more to ensure the death of their ideology than the Dems ever could have.
It has been exposed as a dangerous and bogus ideology both domestically and abroad and the ramifications from it will have to be dealt with for many years to come by all of us.
The rest of us have to either grow our own food or stop eating.
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by foodmicrogrl
February 27, 2007 11:37 PM PST
- Current FDA leadership also plans on closing more than half of its regulatory labs involved in ensuring food safety. Just 6 labs will be left to analyze the ever increasing numbers of imported foods. This is the number of labs FDA had back in 1908 when the U.S. had fewer people and little imported food!Food safety is taking a large step back to the days of Upton Sinclair's
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See all 12 Comments"The Jungle". If you care about your food being safe,write your Congressmen to stop this Commissioner from gutting FDA.