Food Safety

In considering proposed legislation that would give mandatory recall authority to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Congress asked GAO to report on existing voluntary recall programs. This report discusses documented food recalls since 1984, the extent to which these recalls were associated with food-borne illnesses, compliance issues, and the economic impact of these recalls. GAO recommends that USDA and FDA strengthen their guidance to companies on recalls that involve serious health risks and improve their ability to assess the timeliness of companies' recalls.

GAO noted that: (1) USDA and FDA documented more than 3,700 food recalls from the mid-1980s through 1999; (2) USDA, which generally maintains its data by calendar year, identified 515 recalls of fresh and processed meat and poultry from calendar year 1984 through 1999; (3) FDA, which began compiling such data electronically in 1986, identified 3,248 recalls of other foods from fiscal year (FY) 1986 through FY 1999; (4) neither agency has tracked whether recalls were associated with outbreaks of foodborne illnesses over those time periods; (5) however, USDA, according to its electronic recall files since 1992 and its staff's recollections, identified 12 recalls from 1988 through 1999 that were associated with outbreaks of foodborne illnesses; (6) likewise, FDA, according to its staff's recollections and data on illness outbreaks that it has collected since FY 1997, identified 49 recalls for 1997 through 1999 that were associated with outbreaks of foodborne illnesses; (7) USDA and FDA were able to identify a specific contaminant for each of the 61 recalls they considered to be associated with an outbreak--in total, the agencies believe strains of five bacteria and two viruses were responsible; (8) however, the agencies generally were unable to determine how the food became contaminated; (9) according to USDA and FDA officials, efforts to determine the cause of contamination are generally not successful because so much time passes--up to several weeks or months--before an illness is linked to a specific food; (10) recently implemented systems by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to track foodborne illnesses could reduce that lag time and may improve the agencies' ability to determine points of contamination; (11) both agencies believe that companies have generally initiated recalls without delays--either on their own initiative or in response to requests to voluntarily do so; (12) neither USDA nor FDA compiles information on the economic impact of recalls on affected companies; (13) similarly, the food industry associations GAO contacted do not collect this information; (14) however, according to food industry officials, recalls can have a significant economic impact on affected companies through lost sales and food retrieval costs; (15) the extent of this impact depends on such factors as the amount and value of the food recalled, its location in the distribution process, and the severity of the health risk; and (16) in addition, following a recall, consumers may stop buying a company's products or switch to another company's brand for future purchases.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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