Federal mechanisms to ensure US food safety are outdated, fragmented, crisis driven, and urgently in need of a unified science-based strategy headed by a single official. These are the main conclusions of Ensuring Safe Food from Production to Consumption, a congressionally mandated report released on Aug 20 by the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council.
"A dangerous mix of factors", including emerging foodborne pathogens and new production techniques, "have placed new stresses on the nation's efforts to keep the food supply safe", said John C Bailar III, chair of the committee that produced the report. In the USA, up to 9000 deaths and 81 million illnesses each year may be caused by unsafe food.
The committee found that the current regulatory structure was more of "a patchwork quilt" than "a seamless network", involving at least 12 agencies regulated by 35, often outdated federal laws. For example, pizza sold in grocery stores is regulated by the FDA, unless topped by more than 2% meat or poultry, when responsibility lies with the Department of Agriculture.
Main recommendations to improve US food safety
* Base the food-safety system on science.
* Change federal statutes so that inspection, enforcement, and research can be based on scientific risk assessments.
* Develop a national food-safety plan, with science-based funding allocation.
* Establish, by statute, a unified, central framework headed by a single official to manage federal food-safety programmes and control all related resources.
* Equip the federal food-safety agency to integrate and unify state and local efforts. (see http://www2.nas.edu/iom/ )
The agencies involved "often lack coordination and consistency", do not integrate well with state and local efforts, and "are too driven by responding to crises rather than by developing strategies to prevent them".
An effective system must be science based, with an emphasis on risk analysis, concluded the committee. "One central voice at federal level", with adequate funding, is essential. Other recommendations would require major changes to industry--eg, Congress should no longer require visual inspection of every animal carcass, a practice that diverts resources away from more scientific assessment techniques. The suggestion that "foods be imported only from countries with food inspection systems deemed equivalent to that of the [USA]" could adversely affect many nations.
The report may well be a disappointment to President Clinton, since he has repeatedly emphasised his commitment to safe food, yet failed to persuade Congress to fully fund his Food Safety Initiative or pass several key pieces of food-safety legislation.
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