FDA plan requires broader authority

Americans — rightly — take it for granted that their food will always be as safe and wholesome as any in the world. We simply don’t think twice about the safety of the bananas or bread that we feed our children; the popcorn or peanuts that we had for a snack, or the spices or shortening we use in our cooking. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is responsible for the safety of 80 percent of our food supply, is working hard to keep it that way.  Today, ensuring food safety is a constant effort requiring ever-new strategies and actions based on science, forethought, and experience.

This is because the safety of our food faces rapidly changing and multiplying challenges. Microorganisms that used to be regarded as innocuous are increasingly recognized as causing food-borne illnesses, and our aging population is susceptible to them. Americans in general are more and more dependent on bulk processing and rapid distribution of refrigerated and commercially prepared foods that have a potential for contamination.

Moreover, the volume, variety and complexity of FDA regulated products arriving in U.S. ports have been changing dramatically. In the last decade, the number of food lines arriving at approximately 300 ports of entry from about 150 countries has tripled. This vast cornucopia of food imports, which currently amounts to almost 10 million shipments a year, adds a welcome variety of year-around fresh fruits, produce, and other favorite foods to our dinner tables. But the food safety systems of the exporting countries vary from very sophisticated to essentially none.

 The globalization of food production and other challenges underscore the need for a fresh approach to food safety that not only enables us to react effectively to problems but enables us to prevent them by engaging FDA across food’s entire life cycle, from farm (wherever that may be) to fork. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt and I last year charged FDA with developing new ideas for transforming our existing safeguards into a strong food safety shield able to withstand challenges of the 21st century.

The response of top food and regulatory experts was to develop a blueprint for food protection that complements the administration’s Action Plan for Import Safety. Recognizing that we cannot continue inspecting our way to food safety at the U.S. border, it emphasizes food protection through coordination of efforts by exporting countries, the products’ importers, and our federal, state and local authorities. We need to ensure that safety is built into products at the site of their production — wherever that may be — and that they stay safe until they’re delivered to our consumers.

The keystone of FDA’s Food Protection Plan is prevention, coupled with strengthened intervention and response programs. The plan, announced last November, emphasizes industry’s primary responsibility for preventing food-borne illness; calls for an assessment of each product’s vulnerabilities and safety risks; and makes those risks the focus of FDA’s prevention strategies and targeted inspections. This is a realistic, science-based strategy that we’ve already begun implementing. Earlier this year, our preventive efforts led to the detection of botulinum toxin in a canned food facility, and FDA was able to act before any human illness was reported.  

Equipped with advanced scientific tools for detecting contamination, and capable of more rapid response to the earliest signals of a food-borne outbreak, we are confident of achieving the plan’s objectives. For the plan to be effective, however, FDA needs critical new legislative authorities, and I am committed to work with Congress to enact these new provisions.

In an age when a border is not a barrier, and consistent with FDA’s new principle of ensuring food safety from its very origin, we have embarked on another initiative, “FDA Beyond Our Borders.” One goal is to post FDA’s product safety experts overseas. The main job of these agency experts will be to help their foreign colleagues ensure that products meet U.S. standards before they’re exported to our country, and to conduct more inspections of foreign facilities. We are planning to place such outposts in five areas, beginning with China, to be followed by India. Our State Department has already authorized permanent posting in China of eight FDA and five local employees, and we look forward to an approval by Chinese authorities.

I believe that with the support of Congress, industry and the American people, FDA’s novel strategies will provide strong safeguards for our food supply and the public health well into the 21st century.

Von Eschenbach  is the FDA commissioner.