Source: Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE, 2/28/17


The United States needs a national strategy to shore up a still fragmented system that has 16 federal agencies overseeing food safety with sometimes overlapping jurisdiction, the Government Office of Accountability said in a recent report. 

GAO points out as an example that one agency regulates frozen cheese pizzas, another agency regulates frozen pizzas with meat, and additional agencies regulate components of both.

The new report comes a couple years after GAO made recommendations to the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to address the fragmentation issue. GAO says some steps have been made, but USDA and the Office of Budget and Management (OMB) have not addressed the need for government-wide planning.

At a two-day meeting GAO hosted in June 2016, nearly 20 food safety and other experts agreed the federal government needs to develop a national strategy to address ongoing fragmentation and improve the federal food safety oversight system.

They cited examples of the negative effects of fragmentation, including the difference in the statutory authorities of FDA and FSIS resulting in two fundamentally different approaches to inspections. Allocation of resources to those agencies also does not reflect risk of foodborne illness. The Congressional Research Service estimates that FDA is responsible for 80 to 90 percent of the food supply and FSIS for 10 to 20 percent, but in fiscal year 2016 FDA received just under $1 billion and FSIS received $1.20 billion.

A national strategy “could provide a comprehensive framework for considering organizational changes and making resource decisions,” GAO said, noting that it agrees with the experts’ identification of five key areas to be included in a strategy: stating the purpose, establishing sustained leadership, identifying resource requirements, monitoring progress, and including actions for gaining traction. GAO urges the Executive Office of the President to develop such a strategy.

In comments on and contained in GAO’s report, the USDA disagreed with the need for a national strategy but cited factors to consider should changes be proposed. USDA contends, for example, that the report undervalues the effectiveness of existing collaborative efforts and doesn’t recognize new collaborative efforts underway.

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