May 25, 2010
Subcommittee Releases GAO Survey of Food Safety Efforts at FDA
(Washington, DC) – Today, House Science and Technology Committee’s Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Brad Miller (D-NC) released a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that surveyed the state of science used in the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) mission to keep America’s food supply safe. GAO found progress in better harnessing science and expert advice to protect American consumers. However, GAO also found that FDA faces continuing challenges in modernizing its information technology to stay on top of risks, and that knowledge gaps still challenge FDA in its efforts to oversee the safety of fresh produce.
“FDA only has the resources to inspect approximately one percent of all the imported food shipped to the United States,” said Miller. “As a result, FDA simply has to get the best risk assessment information system available to protect the American public from food borne illness. I am glad that GAO concluded that FDA has made progress across a wide number of issues related to food safety, but the agency knows it can do better.”
GAO found that new leadership at the FDA has begun addressing many of the food safety science deficiencies that had been identified in prior GAO reports as well as in the FDA’s Science Board 2007 report, FDA Science and Mission at Risk.
According to GAO, one area where there is room for significant improvement is fruit and vegetable contamination. The U.S. government has encouraged Americans to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables as part of a healthy diet. GAO found that only limited steps have been taken to address such fundamental questions as how E. coli is passed from animals to produce. Without such information, it is impossible to say how far cattle should be kept from a field of leafy greens. Furthermore, FDA lacked sufficient information to develop robust, science-based risk assessments that quantify the relative risks of consuming different types of produce.
GAO recommended that FDA establish a performance measurement plan for the performance of the agency’s new imported food screening program, PREDICT. PREDICT is designed to identify imported food that requires inspection by FDA. However, its introduction has been hindered by information infrastructure problems, such as server crashes and overloads. GAO argued that the agency should develop clear measures to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new system. Imported food makes up a substantial and growing portion of the U.S. food supply-60 percent of fresh fruits and vegetables and 80 percent of seafood is imported. So it is very important that FDA have a robust, reliable inspection risk assessment system in place.
The report, Food Safety: FDA Has Begun to Take Action to Address Weaknesses in Food Safety Research, but Gaps Remain, is available at: https://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10182r.pdf.
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