Source: Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE, 3/7/19


The U.S. government still lacks a cohesive strategy to more effectively and efficiently regulate food safety in this country, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report.

Improving federal management oversight of food safety ranked right in the middle of GAO’s latest High Risk List, identifying 35 federal programs considered “high risk” for vulnerabilities including mismanagement and in need of improvement. The list was topped by “Government-wide Personnel Security Clearance Process” and bookended at the bottom by the U.S. Postal Service’s financial viability.

The update reiterated a message in an earlier GAO report from 2017 that called for a cohesive strategy to correct a federal food safety oversight program that is highly fragmented — exemplified, it said, by the fact that one agency (FDA) regulates a frozen cheese pizza and another (USDA) oversees frozen cheese pizzas with meat toppings.

Governance of the U.S. food supply is comprised of at least 30 federal laws collectively administered by 15 federal agencies. “For more than four decades, we have reported on the fragmented federal food safety oversight system, which has caused inconsistent oversight, ineffective coordination, and inefficient use of resources,” GAO said in its latest report. 

GAO first added federal food safety to the high-risk list in 2007. The agency is calling it out again after finding that, as of November 2018, two of three recommendations it provided in recent years had not been implemented. Since its 2017 high risk report, ratings for all five criteria — leadership commitment (partially met); capacity (partially met); action plan (not met); monitoring (not met); demonstrated progress (partially met) — have not changed.

As for what actions still need to be taken, GAO reiterated that the executive branch and federal agencies need to develop a national strategy for food safety that establishes sustained leadership, identifies resource requirements, and describes how progress will be monitored. The second action needed is USDA to implement the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 requirements by providing more detail on interagency food safety-related collaborations in its strategic and performance planning documents.

GAO said the Executive Office of the President has not provided comments on GAO’s recommendation, while USDA agreed with the GAO’s recommendation for USDA.

Meanwhile, GAO urged Congress to, among other things, direct OMB to develop a government-wide performance plan for food safety that includes results-oriented goals, performance measures, and a discussion of strategies and resources.

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