Money for the Food Safety Mission

Funding will go to increased state sampling of animal feeds and feed ingredients. In addition, the FDA will establish a system designed to facilitate the exchange of data electronically between the agency itself and state agencies to improve the efficiency of inspections and inspection analysis. The FDA’s increased audits of foreign regulatory bodies and updates of its inventory of foreign facilities to support more foreign inspections are also seen as part of the surveillance and enforcement subprogram. The funding for this program is $53,693,000 and 111 FTEs; user fees will generate $119,470,200 and 13 FTEs.

Pursuing Pilot Studies

In the third subprogram, “Improving Response and Recovery,” the FDA will pursue pilot studies with industry using track and trace technology to develop food product tracing regulations. FDA laboratory capacity and capability will be expanded to enhance response and recovery and overall efficiency in food testing laboratories. Funding is $812,000 and one FTE; user fees will generate $938,000 and two FTEs.

Under the fourth subprogram, “IT and Program Support for Initiative Priorities,” FDA will invest $10 million in two enterprise-wide information technology (IT) projects to establish, support, and maintain the systems necessary to collect food registration and inspection user fees. This is part of a multi-year FDA effort to modernize its enterprise-wide IT infrastructure to allow sharing of regulatory data across FDA food programs and to support data centers, IT security, telecommunication networks, and related operations that support FDA food programs.

In addition to enterprise IT investments, the Transforming Food Safety Initiative includes resources to ensure that the participating food program offices receive the support necessary to achieve the proposed public health outcomes. Funding is $4,950,000 and eight FTEs; user fees will generate $18,460,000 and 20 FTEs.

Axendia’s analysis of the 2011 FDA budget shows that the agency plans to allocate significant resources to address IOM report findings.

Johnson is an analyst of counsel and Matlis is president of Axendia; for more information, contact Matlis at [email protected].