President Obama has proposed creating a new agency at the Health and Humans Services Department that would consolidate the food-safety activities of FDA and USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. “The new agency would be charged with pursuing a modern, science-based food safety regulatory regime drawing on best practices of both agencies, with strong enforcement and recall mechanisms, expertise in risk assessment, and enforcement and research efforts across all food types based on scientifically supportable assessments of threats to public health,” says an HHS description.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said a single food-safety agency would bring a coordinated and uniform approach to food regulation while saving money on administration. While the proposal focused on FDA and FSIS, the food agency might actually absorb work now handled by 15 agencies, he told reporters. Asked why the new agency would be put under HHS’s wing rather than USDA, Vilsack said the FDA (an HHS agency) oversees 80 percent of food products – fruits, vegetables and processed food.
“It’s not about turf. People need to get over that. It’s about food safety,” said Vilsack.
Creation of a single food agency has been proposed at various times over the years. With the passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act, FDA and FSIS are aligned in emphasizing the prevention of food illness as well as responding to outbreaks through steps such as recall of tainted food, Vilsack said. On Jan. 28, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, and Assistant Senate Democratic Leader Dick Durbin of Illinois, proposed creation of an independent agency that would be in charge of all federal food-safety work.
The government spends about $1 billion on meat inspection annually. By law, slaughter plants cannot operate without federal inspectors on site.
Senate Agriculture chairman Pat Roberts said the proposal of a new food-safety agency fit the mold of “increasing regulations and growing the Federal bureaucracy. In this tough economy, the last thing producers and consumers need is more red tape,” he said.
The consumer group Food and Water Watch said a single food agency would be a step backward – “FDA and FSIS have different inspection cultures, and trying to merge the two could weaken FSIS inspection standards that offer consumers protections they do not get in any other sector of the food supply.”
For a fact sheet on the USDA fiscal 2016 budget, click here. For the 140-page USDA FY2016 Budget Summary, click here. Vilsack’s statement on the proposed fiscal 2016 budget is available here.