Is It Time for the Next Major Food Safety Overhaul?

In turn, many of the problems we face are likely better addressed by privatizing parts of the U.S. food inspection system. American companies have long partnered with industry through auditing, consulting, and inventing to bring cutting-edge technology into food processing environments.

Moreover, we are seeing a dramatic increase in the amount of imported food we consume. This trend is expected to continue into the foreseeable future. The lack of jurisdiction held by the FDA and USDA outside of the U.S. poses a unique problem that could be solved quickly if the government allowed U.S. companies to conduct inspection and verification activities on its behalf.

The inspectors themselves would have to be drawn from those currently working for the USDA and FSIS, providing what would essentially be a lateral transfer from the public sector to the private. Companies interested in doing the inspections would bid on the jobs, thus providing the best cost-effectiveness ratio possible while simultaneously promoting private sector research.

The infrastructure is already in place to begin implementing privatized inspection. The FSMA, which is currently stalled partly because of its massive size, provides a perfect place for government to begin transitioning inspection responsibility to the private sector. This solution would address the food safety concerns that the FSMA hoped to solve, while at the same time allowing private sector creativity and ingenuity to generate the most cost-effective means of implementing the law. As it stands today, the law is untenable. Privatization provides a means to enact the legislation and save money doing it.

The emergence of new technologies allows for faster, better communication, more effective microbiology, and improved food safety. Indeed, the calls for increased inspection are rapidly outpacing the capacity of government to implement them. Privatizing inspection with governmental oversight makes sense. It is likely that the necessity for in-line human inspection will soon be obsolete as advances in affordable robotics, information technology, and optics begin to outpace human capability.

We have seen more technological advances in the past 100 years than in the previous 50,000. All indications are that this exponentially increasing rate of growth will continue for the next century and beyond. This technological explosion, if continued at current rate, suggests that the changes in the next 20 years will exceed the collective advances of the entire 20th century. The prospect of such immense change is difficult for most people to grasp, but empirical data are difficult to dispute. If it is even close to accurate, the vast advances currently on the horizon in information technology, medicine, robotics, and nanotechnology could result in an end to disease, foodborne illness, and perhaps even world hunger.

It is incumbent upon us to maximize the implementation of technologies that can prevent illness, yield more food, and preserve resources. Allowing government to continue to bloat and expand while providing diminishing returns is inefficient, ineffective, and counterproductive. Technological, scientific, agricultural, and socio-economic changes have reached a confluence where great changes are not only possible but also necessary. Now is the time to act if we truly want to modernize American food safety.

Shawn Stevens, an attorney at Gass Weber Mullins LLC in Milwaukee, Wis., counsels food industry clients nationally on food safety regulatory and liability issues. He can be reached at [email protected] or (414) 224-7784.