A Single Food Agency: Trump Administration Proposes Merging FDA with FSIS

Indeed, such a change would require considerable time and effort, explains Jonathan Havens, vice chair of the food and beverage practice at Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr and former regulatory counsel at FDA. “Merging the food safety functions of FDA and USDA would require Congressional action and reconciliation of regulatory approaches, which the administration acknowledged in its proposal,” Havens says.

“To be sure, several previous single food safety agency legislative proposals have been unsuccessful. However, given the uptick in foodborne illnesses and recalls in recent years, perhaps Congress will view President Trump’s proposal more favorably than it did President Obama’s plan,” Havens told Food Quality & Safety magazine. But he emphasized that he was not forecasting any particular outcome.

Bolstering Collaboration

But interagency cooperation is not at a standstill. FDA and USDA in January issued a formal agreement, in which the agencies pledged to “bolster coordination and collaboration” to streamline regulations and reduce inspection inefficiencies, particularly when both agencies have jurisdiction over a food producer, such as a canned soup facility or pizza manufacturer.

More substantively, in June the agencies announced a collaborative effort to streamline produce safety requirements for farmers by aligning USDA’s Harmonized Good Agricultural Practices Audit Program with the requirements of FDA’s FSMA Produce Safety Rule. The goal is to ensure a better understanding of and compliance with safety standards by produce farmers, and avoid duplication of inspection efforts.

“I have been an advocate for a single food safety agency for years,” says David Acheson, MD, former FDA associate commissioner for foods and founder of The Acheson Group. “The challenges and inefficiencies of having two separate departments overseeing food in the U.S. and the need to streamline the regulations of FDA and USDA are topics that tend to come up in discussion every time a major rule or standard is introduced,” he says.

“And with the recent announcement from the agencies, it’s likely to arise again,” Dr. Acheson continues, “but this time it is the regulatory bodies themselves which have taken positive action to streamline requirements,” he says, referring to the interagency produce safety agreement.