Obama proposes single food safety agency, but consumer groups oppose it
February 02, 2015 |06:59 PM
In his fiscal year 2016 budget proposal released today, President Barack Obama proposed merging the food safety functions of the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies into a single agency within the Health and Human Services Department, but consumer groups whose support would be vital to moving it forward immediately denounced the proposal.
The administration said a single independent food safety agency “would provide focused, centralized leadership, a primary voice on food safety standards and compliance with those standards, and clear lines of responsibility and accountability that will enhance both prevention of and responses to outbreaks of foodborne illnesses. It would rationalize the food safety regulatory regime and allow the federal government to better allocate resources and responsibilities.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who recently introduced a bill to create a single food safety agency, praised the effort.
“American families deserve the security of knowing the food on their table is safe,” DeLauro said. “Our current food safety system is hopelessly fragmented and outdated, consequently putting lives at unnecessary risk.”
“Putting our food safety functions under HHS is a step that I first suggested in 2007; I am glad the administration has proposed taking this action in their fiscal year ’16 budget,” she said.
“Ensuring we have one agency with a singular focus on — and sufficient resources for — the safety of our food supply cannot wait any longer.”
But Chris Waldrop, director of the Food Policy Institute at Consumer Federation of America, said the proposal was not the same as the DeLauro-Durbin bill, and that the CFA opposes the consolidation of food safety operations within HHS.
“HHS is a massive organization,” said Waldrop. “A new food safety agency would be lost among the other priorities of the department, and would likely not receive the recognition or resources necessary for it to be effective. That is why CFA and other groups have called for an independent single food safety agency, as introduced in Congress last week by Sen. Richard Durbin and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro.”
“As envisioned in the Safe Food Act of 2015, this agency would not be housed in HHS or USDA but would be independent, providing the appropriate emphasis and focus for such an important public health function of government as food safety,” he said.
“Further, FDA is currently engaged in a multi-year effort to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act,” Waldrop continued. “This is a big job which requires the agency’s full attention. Efforts to merge the food safety programs at FDA and FSIS would seriously undermine FDA’s implementation activities and hamper efforts to prevent consumers from becoming sick from contaminated food.”
“CFA urges the Administration to drop this proposal and urges Congress to ignore it,” the group said in a news release.
Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said that the HHS consolidation proposal is “a step backward.”
“President Nixon first proposed this idea in the 1970s and Congress wisely rejected it then; we urge this Congress to do the same,” Hauter said. “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.”
Privately, consumer activists and industry officials have said they fear that within a single food safety agency money would be shifted from meat inspection, which by law must be conducted by inspectors in a plant every day, to other foods that FDA and other agencies inspect.
The United Fresh Produce Association said Congress is likely to ignore it.
“The debate over a single food agency is nothing new and while it is certainly an interesting concept, it is unlikely to make much progress on Capitol Hill,” Robert Guenther, the United Fresh senior vice president for public policy, told The Hagstrom Report in an email.
The budget documents said it makes no sense for many agencies to be in charge of food safety, but questions about the proposal dominated a news briefing that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack held this afternoon.
Eric Mittenthal, a vice president for public affairs of the North American Meat Institute, the recently merged successor to the American Meat Institute and the North American Meat Association, said “We have not had the opportunity to review the new bill, but we can say unequivocally that we share the president’s desire for food that is as safe as we can make it."
“It’s important to remember, though, that before talking about merging agencies, we need to determine our nation’s food safety goals,” Mittenthal said.
“Pathogens are our number one food safety threat and we cannot meet the challenges they present simply with a new organization chart. It takes better science and technology and smarter regulation.”
Vilsack described the administration proposal as a request to Congress to grant Obama the authority to reorganize the food safety functions. He said it would be easier to combine the functions than in the past because the FDA now has the same mandate as FSIS to prevent foodborne illness from occurring.
In the past FSIS has had the authority to prevent illness, but FDA’s authority was limited to addressing the problems when they occurred. The Food Safety Modernization Act has also made FDA an agency focused on prevention.
Vilsack said the United States has a “very safe” food supply, but that people still get sick every year. “Until we get those numbers to zero we still have work to do,” he said.
A single food safety agency, he said, would lead to better inspection systems because there would be better and faster communication and because there would be budget savings from “less administrative overhead.”
The United States, he added, is one of the few developed countries and possibly the only developed country to have multiple agencies responsible for food safety.
Asked why HHS has been chosen for the location when FSIS has a better reputation for food safety inspection than FDA, Vilsack said FDA is responsible for 80 percent of food products and USDA’s responsibility for meat, poultry and egg products amounts to 20 percent. He also said he did not believe there had been a lengthy internal discussion about whether the food safety agency should be located within a cabinet agency or be independent.
Asked about concerns that money might be shifted from meat inspection to inspection of other foods, Vilsack said he would expect that a single food safety agency “would probably be pretty forceful in trying to get sufficient resources.”
Asked whether the differences in performance standards between companies inspected by FSIS and FDA would be aligned, Vilsack said “it is fair to say” that detailed questions have not been answered and won’t be unless Congress gives Obama authority to reorganize the food safety function and works with the administration on those matters.
Discussing the location of the agency is “the old way of thinking,” Vilsack said. “We are focused on food safety.”
Asked whether the administration might next propose moving the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP or food stamps, to HHS since HHS handles other social welfare programs, Vilsack said he considers that unlikely because social welfare programs and providing food “are not doing the same job.”
The administration said a single independent food safety agency “would provide focused, centralized leadership, a primary voice on food safety standards and compliance with those standards, and clear lines of responsibility and accountability that will enhance both prevention of and responses to outbreaks of foodborne illnesses. It would rationalize the food safety regulatory regime and allow the federal government to better allocate resources and responsibilities.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who recently introduced a bill to create a single food safety agency, praised the effort.
“American families deserve the security of knowing the food on their table is safe,” DeLauro said. “Our current food safety system is hopelessly fragmented and outdated, consequently putting lives at unnecessary risk.”
“Putting our food safety functions under HHS is a step that I first suggested in 2007; I am glad the administration has proposed taking this action in their fiscal year ’16 budget,” she said.
“Ensuring we have one agency with a singular focus on — and sufficient resources for — the safety of our food supply cannot wait any longer.”
But Chris Waldrop, director of the Food Policy Institute at Consumer Federation of America, said the proposal was not the same as the DeLauro-Durbin bill, and that the CFA opposes the consolidation of food safety operations within HHS.
“HHS is a massive organization,” said Waldrop. “A new food safety agency would be lost among the other priorities of the department, and would likely not receive the recognition or resources necessary for it to be effective. That is why CFA and other groups have called for an independent single food safety agency, as introduced in Congress last week by Sen. Richard Durbin and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro.”
“As envisioned in the Safe Food Act of 2015, this agency would not be housed in HHS or USDA but would be independent, providing the appropriate emphasis and focus for such an important public health function of government as food safety,” he said.
“Further, FDA is currently engaged in a multi-year effort to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act,” Waldrop continued. “This is a big job which requires the agency’s full attention. Efforts to merge the food safety programs at FDA and FSIS would seriously undermine FDA’s implementation activities and hamper efforts to prevent consumers from becoming sick from contaminated food.”
“CFA urges the Administration to drop this proposal and urges Congress to ignore it,” the group said in a news release.
Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said that the HHS consolidation proposal is “a step backward.”
“President Nixon first proposed this idea in the 1970s and Congress wisely rejected it then; we urge this Congress to do the same,” Hauter said. “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.”
Privately, consumer activists and industry officials have said they fear that within a single food safety agency money would be shifted from meat inspection, which by law must be conducted by inspectors in a plant every day, to other foods that FDA and other agencies inspect.
The United Fresh Produce Association said Congress is likely to ignore it.
“The debate over a single food agency is nothing new and while it is certainly an interesting concept, it is unlikely to make much progress on Capitol Hill,” Robert Guenther, the United Fresh senior vice president for public policy, told The Hagstrom Report in an email.
The budget documents said it makes no sense for many agencies to be in charge of food safety, but questions about the proposal dominated a news briefing that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack held this afternoon.
Eric Mittenthal, a vice president for public affairs of the North American Meat Institute, the recently merged successor to the American Meat Institute and the North American Meat Association, said “We have not had the opportunity to review the new bill, but we can say unequivocally that we share the president’s desire for food that is as safe as we can make it."
“It’s important to remember, though, that before talking about merging agencies, we need to determine our nation’s food safety goals,” Mittenthal said.
“Pathogens are our number one food safety threat and we cannot meet the challenges they present simply with a new organization chart. It takes better science and technology and smarter regulation.”
Vilsack described the administration proposal as a request to Congress to grant Obama the authority to reorganize the food safety functions. He said it would be easier to combine the functions than in the past because the FDA now has the same mandate as FSIS to prevent foodborne illness from occurring.
In the past FSIS has had the authority to prevent illness, but FDA’s authority was limited to addressing the problems when they occurred. The Food Safety Modernization Act has also made FDA an agency focused on prevention.
Vilsack said the United States has a “very safe” food supply, but that people still get sick every year. “Until we get those numbers to zero we still have work to do,” he said.
A single food safety agency, he said, would lead to better inspection systems because there would be better and faster communication and because there would be budget savings from “less administrative overhead.”
The United States, he added, is one of the few developed countries and possibly the only developed country to have multiple agencies responsible for food safety.
Asked why HHS has been chosen for the location when FSIS has a better reputation for food safety inspection than FDA, Vilsack said FDA is responsible for 80 percent of food products and USDA’s responsibility for meat, poultry and egg products amounts to 20 percent. He also said he did not believe there had been a lengthy internal discussion about whether the food safety agency should be located within a cabinet agency or be independent.
Asked about concerns that money might be shifted from meat inspection to inspection of other foods, Vilsack said he would expect that a single food safety agency “would probably be pretty forceful in trying to get sufficient resources.”
Asked whether the differences in performance standards between companies inspected by FSIS and FDA would be aligned, Vilsack said “it is fair to say” that detailed questions have not been answered and won’t be unless Congress gives Obama authority to reorganize the food safety function and works with the administration on those matters.
Discussing the location of the agency is “the old way of thinking,” Vilsack said. “We are focused on food safety.”
Asked whether the administration might next propose moving the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP or food stamps, to HHS since HHS handles other social welfare programs, Vilsack said he considers that unlikely because social welfare programs and providing food “are not doing the same job.”
