Food Safety

This report focuses on the need to strengthen food safety controls to help reduce the risk of diseases linked to unsafe animal feed. Few incidents of human illness in the U.S. have been linked directly to contaminated animal feed because public health investigations of foodborne illness cannot usually determine if the original source of the contamination is the feed, handling of the product, transportation, or other factors. Potentially major public health and economic consequences could result from contaminated feed and there is a need for strong regulatory controls.

GAO noted that: (1) in the United States, only a relatively few incidents of human illness have been traced to contaminated animal feed; (2) even when public health officials are able to trace the source of a disease to a food product, such as eggs, they cannot usually determine if the original source of the contamination is the animal feed, the improper handling of the product, or another factor; (3) while livestock or poultry may in some cases be immune to the contaminants themselves, the food product from these animals can cause human illness; (4) with respect to bovine spongiform/encephalopathy (BSE) in the United States, health officials have not identified any illness in livestock or in humans caused by this disease; (5) however, the Department of Agriculture has several studies underway to test sheep from three Vermont farms suspected of having BSE; (6) no reported incidents of human illness from chemically contaminated animal feed have been identified in the United States; (7) however, illnesses from this source can take years to develop and would be difficult to link to animal feed; (8) FDA has taken some actions to better ensure the safety of animal feed, but problems such as lack of awareness of FDA's regulation, delays in issuing a new FDA regulation to strengthen controls over the bacterial contamination of feed, and DOT's failure to issue regulations for the safe transport of animal feed could lead to human illnesses; (9) in 1997, FDA issued a regulation to prevent BSE in the United States; (10) to assess compliance with this regulation, FDA and state inspectors have visited over 9,100 firms, such as farms that produce their own feed and rendering plants that process meat scraps for animal feed; (11) inspectors found that, 1,700 firms were not aware of the regulation and thus could produce or use animal feed that was not in compliance; (12) FDA officials also told GAO that the agency is developing a regulation to further strengthen controls over bacterial and other contaminants by, among other things, directing feed manufacturers to determine which hazards pose the greatest risks to the safety of their products and to establish controls to minimize these risks; (13) DOT has not issued regulations to ensure the safe transportation of animal feed, as directed by the Sanitary Food Transportation Act of 1990; and (14) according to DOT officials GAO spoke with, the Department has pursued a number of regulatory, administrative, and legislative initiatives to address the statutory mandate.

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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