Food Safety Outlook for 2015

“I don’t believe FDA will have enough resources to pay the states all they need and the states will not have the funding to do it on their own,” Dr. Acheson says. For example, state agencies have traditionally been responsible for inspecting farms while USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) inspects, certifies, and grades agricultural and other farm products. Under FSMA, FDA will have the authority to inspect certain food safety issues on larger farms, a responsibility it would prefer to delegate. “AMS inspectors are trained in food quality and in grading, not in food safety,” Dr. Acheson says. “Someone will have to pay for their training as food safety professionals.”

Last year, public health organizations including the Pew Charitable Trusts, the American Public Health Association, and the Association of Public Health Laboratories pressured lawmakers to increase FDA’s funding for FSMA. Expect to see similar actions this year especially because of worries that the fiscally-minded, Republican-controlled Congress may be reluctant to grant the agency significant additional funding. Indeed, there already are signs of congressional mistrust; the funding bill gives the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services (FDA’s parent agency) $1.5 million extra to conduct oversight investigations of the FDA. The bill notes that FDA’s resources have increased by more than 60 percent over the past five years as its responsibilities have grown, but effective oversight has not kept pace.

The real reason appears to be more deep-seated. “During the past year, FDA has informed non-governmental stakeholders of important decisions and announcements before they informed the [congressional] committees,” according to an explanatory statement of the funding bill, which also carries the weight of law. “A collaborative working relationship between the committees and the agency is necessary to ensure efficient and effective implementation of Congress’s funding decisions. These actions jeopardized this relationship. As such, FDA is directed to ensure the committees are notified of major changes to existing policies and any significant developments in its operations prior to providing non-governmental stakeholders such information.”

The funding bill gives the CDC nearly $405 million to respond to the growing threats of emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases. Of this amount, nearly $48 million is dedicated to food safety, an increase of $8 million for the agency to acquire “advanced DNA technology to improve and modernize diagnostic capabilities and enhance surveillance, detection, and prevention efforts at the state and local levels.” CDC labs receive an additional $7.25 million to “establish cutting-edge lab diagnostics to improve rapid identification and detection of emerging pathogens; establish an innovative e-pathology system to speed communication and establish virtual specimen sharing in real time; and increase research capacity and safety in high-containment labs.”

USDA Inspections

The funding bill also allocates slightly more than $1 billion to USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). In order to counter economic fraud and improve the safety of the nation’s seafood supply, FSIS, in conjunction with USDA and FDA, “is encouraged to support developing technologies that will provide rapid, portable, and facile screening of food fish species at port sites and wholesale and retail centers,” the explanatory statement says.

As part of its emphasis on prevention of foodborne pathogens, FSIS this year hopes to encourage private facilities to voluntarily develop food defense plans to prevent intentional contamination, with the goal of achieving 90 percent compliance by September 30. FSIS also wants to develop new and enhance existing policies, procedures, notices, and directives to industry to sample, test, and establish new Salmonella performance standards for raw ground chicken and parts, raw beef, and raw pork. It will also direct more than 80 percent of its investigative and enforcement activities on food safety issues. In July, FSIS is expected to finalize recordkeeping regulations that will require all establishments and retail stores that grind raw beef products intended for commerce to maintain records of their suppliers.

China Food Not Welcomed

The 1,600-plus-page funding bill has been criticized because lawmakers inserted a number of amendments of particular interest to them or their constituents that otherwise would not have been passed into law. One of these provisions bars poultry that is processed and cooked in China from being used in the nation’s school lunch and breakfast programs, the Child and Adult Care Food Program, and the Summer Food Service Program. FSIS had previously granted approval to four Chinese poultry processing plans to export cooked chicken to the U.S. so long as the birds had been raised and slaughtered in the U.S., Canada, or Chile. The decision raised red flags, so to speak, among U.S. consumer and other groups because of China’s abysmal food safety record.