WASHINGTON — Seven failures in six years. That’s how many times one restaurant was allowed to violate seafood-handling procedures before the Food and Drug Administration was able to file an injunction and get the establishment closed.
A food-safety bill making its way to the Senate floor would grant the FDA broader enforcement powers to prevent such persistent food malfeasance.
“There’s no question the FDA is one of the most beleaguered agencies,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who sponsored the bill. “Their mission and assignments are so large, and they struggle to find the resources to meet the needs.”
“We’re trying to find a way to move the FDA into a new funding level that meets their responsibilities,” said Durbin.
Legislation to overhaul the nation’s food-safety system passed the House last July, and Durbin said he expects the Senate’s bill to reach the chamber’s floor in the next few weeks.
Highlighting the bill’s importance is a recent report from the Health and Human Services Department detailing the FDA’s inability to regulate restaurants and food processing plants due to understaffing and funding woes.
The bill proposes $825 million of the FDA’s budget strictly for food safety in fiscal year 2010, an almost 25 percent increase from the $662 million allocated in 2009.
The report found food contamination responsible for 300,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths each year in the U.S. But since 2004, the FDA has inspected no more than 29% of food facilities in a given year. That has dropped each year since — even as the number of facilities increased, bottoming out at only 22% in fiscal year 2008.
Staff cuts have plagued the FDA since 2003, when the administration had 3,167 full-time employees who inspected food facilities. By 2007, the most recent year figures were available, that department shrunk almost 19% to 2,569 employees. The bill aims to arm the FDA with a staff of 3,800 employees in fiscal year 2010 and 5,000 by fiscal year 2014.
“It is long past time to overhaul a system that has become inadequate and outdated to handle the challenges of the 21st century food supply chain,” said Michael Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods, in a statement on Tuesday.
Feeble authority
First introduced in the Senate in March 2009, the bill sets out to ensure the government the authority to remove dangerous food from the shelves, improve tracking so all contaminated products can be traced to their origins, and guarantee that imported foods meet established standards, and that inspection is done before reaching American shores.
As it stands, the FDA wields feeble authority. Even when it assigns its most severe classification, it is exceedingly difficult for the administration to compel the facility to act. Facilities can refuse to share their records with the FDA, even if they have a history of violations.
The food-safety bill would rectify this problem, giving the FDA recall authority, a necessity according to Jaydee Hanson, policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety, a non-governmental group based in Washington.
“It’s a joke the FDA has had to beg people [to recall products],” Hanson said. “In some cases, such as the Peanut Corporation of America, they were begging them to do a recall,” after salmonella was detected at a Georgia plant in 2009.
Chris Waldrop, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, said the bill would bring the FDA up to date and allow it to act strongly instead of reacting passively.
A big change in American eating habits has been the amount of imported foods now regularly consumed, with some estimates that as much as 80 percent of the seafood and almost half of the fresh fruit consumed in the U.S. comes from outside of America’s borders.
“Part of the problem is that the laws are antiquated and haven’t kept up with changes in our eating habits, technology and changes in society,” Waldrop said. “It is a strong bill and puts the FDA on a preventive path and provides the FDA with the authority it is lacking.”
But not everyone is on board.
Deborah Stockton, executive director of the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, said the bill would increase food contamination due to higher instances of centralized production, centralized processing and long-distance transportation.
She also said the bill goes too far in the other direction, giving the FDA “ridiculous sweeping authority.”
Despite the detractors, Durbin is confident in the bill’s integrity. Seven Republicans joined him as co-sponsors.
“We have strong bipartisan support and I feel we have a good chance to get something done this year,” Durbin said.