FDA Needs to do More than Create a ‘Food Safety Czar' to Address Risks to Food Safety System

Press Release

FDA Needs to do More than Create a ‘Food Safety Czar' to Address Risks to Food Safety System

Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (Conn.-3) released the following statement questioning the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) decision to create a ‘food safety czar,' asking when the agency would take real initiative to address the risks to the collapsing food safety system.

"The creation of the new ‘food safety czar' appears to merely be a reshuffling of management that actually will be counterproductive and will do little to refocus the agency on its mission to protect the public health. These new responsibilities could have been added to the current FDA structure with minimal disruption instead of creating another bureaucratic layer and diverting resources from other important matters in the agency.

"It is further troubling that the new czar has been tasked with developing ‘an agency-wide, visionary strategy for food safety and defense.' On the heels of the food-borne illness outbreaks connected with spinach, peanut butter and most recently pet food, the agency should already have a sense of the barriers, gaps and most critical needs in our food safety system. For an agency that likes to demonstrate its commitment to food safety by pointing out that ‘food' is the first word in its name, these tasks would suggest otherwise.

"And the very person named to the position, David Acheson - who currently serves as the chief medical officer and director of the Office of Food Defense, Communication and Emergency Response at the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition - sees being proactive as taking action after the known contaminate is already in the food supply system, and I quote, ‘Because we know that the melamine and melamine-related compounds were in the wheat gluten and the rice protein concentrate, we're about to initiate a proactive surveillance assignment focused on two major features. … And it's the agency trying to get out ahead of the curve and do the right thing by public health to look for problems ahead of time.' [emphasis added]

"Further, the agency has yet to address the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released three months ago that designated our food safety system as a high-risk area. The report notes that the patchwork nature of the federal oversight of food safety calls into question whether the government can plan more strategically to inspect food production processes, identify and react more quickly to any food-borne illness outbreaks. The GAO also questions whether the fragmented structure allows agencies to focus on achieving results to promote the safety and integrity of the food supply.

"The food safety system is collapsing, yet one of the main agencies responsible for it will not ask for the necessary authority to effectively carry out its mission. What is needed to adequately protect our food supply is strong enforcement authority that would require mandatory recalls of contaminated products and a commitment from agency management to follow-through with safety investigations - we do not need a decision-maker for the decision-maker. It will take more than a simple reshuffling of the organizational chart to restore confidence in our food supply."

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