Food Safety

Agencies Should Further Test Plans for Responding to Deliberate Contamination Gao ID: RCED-00-3 October 27, 1999

Are federal food safety regulatory agencies prepared to respond to acts or threats of deliberate food contamination, including those by terrorists? The agencies primarily responsible are the Food Safety and Inspection Service and the Food and Drug Administration. Deliberate contamination of food with a biological agent has rarely occurred in the United States. However, GAO identified two acts since 1984, which produced short-term illnesses among more than 750 people, but no deaths. In addition, from 1995 through 1999, the federal agencies reported three threats--two were hoaxes and the other is still under investigation. This report describes the plans and procedures that federal agencies have in place to cope with threats and acts of deliberate food contamination with a biological agent.

GAO noted that: (1) deliberate contamination of food with a biological agent has rarely occurred in the United States, according to federal agencies; (2) GAO identified two such acts since 1984, both of which produced short-term illnesses among a combined total of about 765 people, but no deaths; (3) similarly, threats of contamination with a biological agent occur infrequently: from October 1995 through March 1999, federal agencies reported receiving three such threats--two of these were hoaxes, and the other is still an open investigation; (4) the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has written procedures for contacting key FDA and other federal officials and experts to quickly develop an approach to respond to threats or acts of contamination; (5) the approach may involve assessing the credibility of a threat or requesting a recall of the contaminated food; (6) the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) also has written procedures for responding to acts of contamination, which include conducting a preliminary investigation to assess the health hazards and, if necessary, requesting a recall; and (7) for threats of contamination, FSIS is developing a plan that will include coordination steps with other affected federal agencies.

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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