Posthearing Questions Related to Fragmentation and Overlap in the Federal Food Safety System
Gao ID: GAO-04-832R May 26, 2004
GAO testified before Congress at the hearing A System Rued: Inspecting Food. This report responds to Congress's request that GAO provide answers to follow-up questions from the hearing.
The current structure of the food safety system in general, and the food inspection programs in particular, could be improved by reducing the number of entities charged with oversight, thereby enhancing accountability and increasing government efficiency. From a congressional perspective, the fragmented nature of the food inspection system results in divided, and perhaps diluted, responsibility for ensuring a safe food supply and protecting the public health. It is difficult to compare program effectiveness when the agencies responsible for maintaining food safety are operating under different statutory requirements. In addition, for consumers as well as for GAO, it is at times difficult to determine which agency is responsible for ensuring the safety of a particular food product. Beyond the issues of organizational inefficiency and confusing jurisdictional responsibilities, the vulnerability of our food supply to potential attack and deliberate contamination provides a new and compelling impetus for reorganizing the federal food inspection system. As several of our recent testimonies have stressed, bioterrorist attacks could be directed at many different targets in the farm-to-table continuum, including crops, livestock, and food products in the processing and distribution chain. In our view, consolidating all food safety functions (e.g. standard setting, inspection, risk assessment, research, and surveillance) under a single independent agency would offer the most logical approach to resolve long-standing problems, address emerging food safety issues, and better ensure a safe food supply. If, instead, all food safety authorities were consolidated under an existing agency, the advantages and disadvantages of charging USDA or FDA with those responsibilities must be considered. In our view, a unified, risk-based approach to federal food safety should characterize any new inspection system. A critical step in designing and implementing a riskbased food safety system is identifying the most important food safety problems, across the entire food system, from a public health perspective. Identifying these problems would help focus federal oversight resources. Comprehensive, uniform, and risk-based food safety legislation is needed to provide the foundation for this approach. We also believe that in order to be effective, a federal food inspection system should also include performance standards to help evaluate the effectiveness of federal regulatory requirements for industry and its efforts to meet those requirements. From our perspective, reorganization of food safety authorities, including the consolidation of critical functions such as rule making, inspection, surveillance, and research, does not necessarily mean that all functions should be incorporated into a single food safety agency. In fact, we believe it may make sense to maintain some functions separately. However, in the event of consolidation limited strictly to the food inspection functions, we believe that all food inspection functions should be incorporated into the single food safety agency.
GAO-04-832R, Posthearing Questions Related to Fragmentation and Overlap in the Federal Food Safety System
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May 26, 2004:
The Honorable Jo Ann Davis:
Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Civil Service and Agency Organization:
Committee on Government Reform:
House of Representatives:
Subject: Posthearing Questions Related to Fragmentation and Overlap in
the Federal Food Safety System:
Dear Chairwoman Davis:
On March 30, I testified before your subcommittee at the hearing A
System Rued: Inspecting Food.[Footnote 1] This report responds to your
request that I provide answers to follow-up questions from the hearing.
Your questions, along with my responses, follow.
(1) Does the lack of a single official responsible for the operations
of all food inspection programs in the federal government decrease the
effectiveness of congressional oversight? How has the current system
affected the oversight work of GAO?
As the Comptroller General stressed in his September 2003 testimony
before the subcommittee,[Footnote 2] the current structure of the food
safety system in general, and the food inspection programs in
particular, could be improved by reducing the number of entities
charged with oversight, thereby enhancing accountability and increasing
government efficiency. From a congressional perspective, the fragmented
nature of the food inspection system results in divided, and perhaps
diluted, responsibility for ensuring a safe food supply and protecting
the public health. For example, congressional oversight committees and
GAO must review and analyze multiple agencies' programs, policies, and
budgets, in order to address questions of overall food safety
oversight, rather than focus on food safety inspection programs under
one agency's jurisdiction. In particular, it is difficult to compare
program effectiveness when the agencies responsible for maintaining
food safety are operating under different statutory requirements. In
addition, for consumers as well as for GAO, it is at times difficult to
determine which agency is responsible for ensuring the safety of a
particular food product. For example, the Department of Agriculture
(USDA) might be responsible for inspecting a particular food item, but
once that item is used in a processed food product, it might be
regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Arbitrary
jurisdictional lines of authority can make the current food safety
inspection system difficult to assess and, more importantly,
unresponsive to the needs of the public.
(2) Why should the Congress consider a major reorganization of the
federal food inspection system at this time?
Beyond the issues of organizational inefficiency and confusing
jurisdictional responsibilities, the vulnerability of our food supply
to potential attack and deliberate contamination provides a new and
compelling impetus for reorganizing the federal food inspection system.
As several of our recent testimonies have stressed, bioterrorist
attacks could be directed at many different targets in the farm-to-
table continuum, including crops, livestock, and food products in the
processing and distribution chain. Both FDA and USDA have taken steps
to protect the food supply against terrorist attack, but it is, for the
most part, the current food safety system that the nation must depend
on to prevent and respond to this potential threat. At present, the
federal agencies responsible for oversight of food safety have
differing authorities. As a result, some inspectors provide daily
inspections of certain food products, while others inspect much less
frequently--every year to 3 years, on average. Consequently, FDA
products are not receiving the same level of scrutiny as USDA products,
potentially making FDA products more vulnerable to inadvertent as well
as deliberate contamination. This is of particular concern in the case
of imported food. Equally important, at a time of increasing budget
deficits, the current distribution of inspection resources is not the
most efficient use of federal resources. As my recent testimony pointed
out, FDA has roughly 1,900 inspectors who must oversee about 57,000
facilities, whereas USDA has more than three times the number of
inspectors at about 6,400 establishments--and this distribution of
federal resources is not based on the food safety risk of particular
products.
(3) Should such reorganization be in the form of putting all of the
food inspection functions under an existing agency or should a new
agency be created to handle all food inspection functions? Please
briefly describe the pros and cons of either option.
In our view, consolidating all food safety functions (e.g. standard
setting, inspection, risk assessment, research, and surveillance) under
a single independent agency would offer the most logical approach to
resolve long-standing problems, address emerging food safety issues,
and better ensure a safe food supply. If, instead, all food safety
authorities were consolidated under an existing agency, the advantages
and disadvantages of charging USDA or FDA with those responsibilities
must be considered. At present, USDA has more resources and possibly
more experience with food product inspections because of its longer
institutional history. However, USDA promotes agriculture, and that may
be perceived as a conflict of interest. In contrast, FDA, as a public
health agency, has a mission that aligns well with food safety, and it
has established scientific expertise in preventing foodborne illness.
If reorganization is limited to the inspection functions alone, it is
not cost effective, or reasonable, to create a new agency to take on
solely these functions. In the current budgetary climate, it would be
better to designate one current agency as the lead agency for all food
safety inspection matters. Merging USDA's food inspection
responsibilities into FDA would be an alternative that would separate
market promotion activities from food safety activities--a criticism
that is often raised about USDA's dual mission as promoter of
agricultural and food products and at the same time overseer of their
safety. Also, it would place food safety oversight under a public
health agency. Merging FDA's food inspection activities into USDA has
the advantage of needing to move fewer federal personnel. In either
case, underlying the transference of inspection responsibilities is the
fundamental need to reform the current legislative structure for food
safety, so that the lead inspection agency would be able to focus its
resources on the foods with the greatest risk to consumers.
(4) What are some of the characteristics that should be inherent in a
streamlined federal food inspection system?
In our view, a unified, risk-based approach to federal food safety
should characterize any new inspection system. A critical step in
designing and implementing a risk-based food safety system is
identifying the most important food safety problems, across the entire
food system, from a public health perspective. Identifying these
problems would help focus federal oversight resources. Comprehensive,
uniform, and risk-based food safety legislation is needed to provide
the foundation for this approach. We also believe that in order to be
effective, a federal food inspection system should include performance
standards to help evaluate the effectiveness of federal regulatory
requirements for industry and its efforts to meet those requirements.
(5) In the event of some sort of consolidation of the food inspection
functions into a "single agency," in either a new agency or an existing
one, are there any food inspection functions that should remain outside
the "single agency"? If so, please explain the necessity for keeping
the function out of the "single agency.":
From our perspective, reorganization of food safety authorities,
including the consolidation of critical functions such as rule making,
inspection, surveillance, and research, does not necessarily mean that
all functions should be incorporated into a single food safety agency.
In fact, we believe it may make sense to maintain some functions
separately. If, for example, FDA's food safety authorities were
subsumed under USDA, it might be desirable to keep functions such as
foodborne illness surveillance in the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, which is part of the Department of Health and Human
Services. However, in the event of consolidation limited strictly to
the food inspection functions, we believe that all food inspection
functions should be incorporated into the single food safety agency.
We appreciate the opportunity to comment and hope that these responses
are of assistance. If you have any additional questions, please do not
hesitate to call me at (202) 512-3841.
Sincerely yours,
Signed by:
Lawrence J. Dyckman:
Director, Natural Resources and Environment:
(360480):
FOOTNOTES
[1] U.S. General Accounting Office, Federal Food Safety and Security
System: Fundamental Restructuring Is Needed to Address Fragmentation
and Overlap, GAO-04-588T (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 30, 2004).
[2] U.S. General Accounting Office, Results-Oriented Government:
Shaping the Government to Meet 21st Century Challenges, GAO-03-1168T
(Washington, D.C.: Sept. 17, 2003).
