Food Safety and Quality

FDA Surveys Not Adequate to Demonstrate Safety of Milk Supply Gao ID: RCED-91-26 November 1, 1990

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed: (1) the adequacy of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) 1988 and 1990 surveys to determine the presence of selected antibiotic drug residues in milk; and (2) whether the survey information provided a sufficient basis for FDA public statements on the safety of the milk supply.

GAO found that the survey results were not representative of the nation's milk supply, since FDA: (1) tested for only a limited number of drugs in comparison to the total number of animal drugs that could have been present in milk products; (2) was unable to detect some drugs at their concern level; (3) and the states did not routinely screen milk for many of the approved or unapproved drugs that might be used by the dairy industry; and (4) oversight efforts were complicated by the extra-label use of unapproved drugs and by questions regarding the basis for setting unofficial concern levels and how to treat such factors as the cumulative effect of closely related drugs and drug metabolites.

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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