Report calls for overhaul of US food safety system ================================================== * Nancy Benac Tainted peanut butter. Poisoned cookie dough. Deadly spinach. In an era of daunting problems with food-borne disease and illness, a prestigious scientific panel is recommending that the United States government overhaul its food safety system to zero in on the riskiest foods and target limited resources where they can do the most good. A 500-page report by a committee of the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council recommends, among other things, that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) shift “from a reactive approach to a risk-based approach” to food safety, set up a central data analysis operation to more efficiently pinpoint problems and better coordinate inspection efforts with state and local governments. The study, *Enhancing Food Safety: The Role of the Food and Drug Administration*, suggests the FDA is failing to keep up with new challenges and lacks the vision to ensure food safety ([http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12892](http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12892)). While more than 15 US agencies have some role in food safety, the FDA oversees about 80% of the country’s food supply, including all produce, seafood and cheeses. The importance of bolstering food safety efforts is evident in the latest statistics on food-borne illnesses — approximately 76 million people in the US are affected each year, causing more than 300 000 hospitalizations and 5000 deaths, according to the report. A number of recent high-profile outbreaks have heightened public interest in the problem, including a salmonella outbreak last year that affected hundreds, was suspected of causing nine deaths and resulted in one of the largest product recalls in history. Robert Wallace, a University of Iowa professor who chaired the committee that wrote the report, says the FDA needs to “go where the problems are, and that’s why you need good data.” Better data, he says, should be the basis for everything the FDA does, including “where they put inspection resources, where they put communication resources, where they put their scientific portfolio.” Lewis Grossman, a professor at American University’s Washington College of Law who also was a member of the committee, says the FDA is taking steps in the right direction but needs “an overall systematic approach to their food safety mission. It’s a bit scattershot right now.” Grossman stresses that while the government must do much to ensure food safety, consumers have to recognize that “a risk-free food supply is an impossibility.” “Everybody in the entire chain from farm to fork has a role to play,” he says. While the committee was working on its report, which includes recommendations for legislative action, members of Congress were moving ahead on their own with food safety legislation that covers some of the same ground. A bill approved by the House of Representatives last year would give the agency expanded access to records and test results and more authority to conduct recalls and increase inspections at food facilities. Similar legislation has passed a committee in the US Senate and is awaiting action by the full Senate. Wallace says the pending legislation would address a number of problems laid out in the committee’s report, but there is much more to be done. Some of the report’s recommendations, he notes, can be acted upon voluntarily by the FDA. He says the report, issued in June, had been well-received by the FDA, and that “what we wish for them, they would like to have for themselves.” Wallace says the committee concluded that the nation ultimately should have a single food safety agency, but that moving toward that long-term goal could be done in an “evolutionary” manner. The report, in a look at other countries’ food safety systems, notes that Canada in 1996 created the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which provides all food inspection services and enforces standards established by Health Canada. FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg welcomed the study and said in a statement that the FDA is working through President Barack Obama’s year-old Food Safety Working Group to ensure all government agencies with a role in food safety are working together. ![Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/182/12/1288/F1.medium.gif) [Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/182/12/1288/F1) In 2006, *Escherichia coli* O157:H7 found in raw spinach in the United States was linked to about 200 illnesses and several deaths. Image courtesy of © 2010 Jupiterimages Corp. Obama issued a statement on July 7 supporting action on the Senate legislation, which he said would complement the efforts of the working group. He said the administration already has taken steps to reduce the prevalence of *E. coli*, implemented new standards to reduce exposure to campylobacter, one of the most common causes of food poisoning, and issued a rule to help control salmonella contamination, the most common cause. Attorney Bill Marler, whose Seattle law firm specializes in food-related illnesses, says a lack of coordination among state, federal and local governments is one reason that outbreaks of foodborne illnesses aren’t identified more quickly. FDA is “underfunded and under-staffed for what we expect them to do and it’s only getting worse” as imports increase and food production becomes more complex, Marler says. “The risks are just larger. We’ve not kept up with the reality of how our food is produced.” Consumer groups, meanwhile, have been trying to increase pressure on Congress to act by stressing public interest in the issue. Sandra Eskin, director of the Pew Health Group’s food safety campaign, says people are shocked to learn the FDA doesn’t have authority under 70-year-old food safety laws to require recalls, and that food facilities can go a decade between FDA inspections. Make Our Food Safe, a coalition of consumer, public health and food safety groups, welcomed the committee’s recommendation that the FDA be given more authority. It said in a statement that the FDA “desperately needs a specific mandate to prevent foodborne illness rather than continuing to act only after people become sick or die.” The coalition has an ally in Robyn Allgood of Idaho, whose two-year-old son Kyle died in 2006 from eating a spinach smoothie contaminated with *E. coli*. Allgood recently taped a radio ad urging senators to act on the legislation, and travelled to Washington to press for action. “No family should have to go through this,” Allgood says in the radio ad, paid for by the Pew Charitable Trust. “We can save other children.” The Institute of Medicine and National Research Council are private, nonprofit institutions that provide advice to Congress, which requested the food safety report. ## Footnotes * Previously published at [www.cmaj.ca](http://www.cmaj.ca)