USDA OK with food safety budget; FDA is not
October 05, 2011 | 06:52 PM | Filed in: Food safety Food and Drug Administration Food Safety and Inspection Service USDA
By JERRY HAGSTROM
The nation’s food safety inspection programs for meat and poultry at the Agriculture Department may be safe from budget cuts, but similar programs at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are vulnerable and cutbacks at the state and local level may also endanger food safety, three key federal officials said Tuesday.
Im least concerned about the food-safety part than any other part” of the USDA budget, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said at a food policy conference sponsored by the Consumer Federation of America. Vilsack said he believes the public is so concerned about food safety that he has told Agriculture Undersecretary for Food Safety Elisabeth Hagen that the budget for the Food Safety and Inspection Service is “untouchable.”
He later told reporters that “food safety is in a different world. All the other [USDA] programs are in a competitive” situtation.
The House-passed fiscal year 2012 Agriculture appropriations bill would cut the FSIS budget by 3.4 percent to $972.7 million, according to a Bloomberg report today, but the House cut other programs in the bill much more. The Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee did not cut the budget for food safety, Bloomberg said. The bill has not come up on the Senate floor yet.
Hagen also said recently that the agency is committed to keeping the meat, poultry and egg products it inspects safe despite the budget pressures. Under the 2008 farm bill, the agency is also supposed to take over inspection of farm-raised catfish, but that rule is held up at the Office of Management and Budget.
But FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg told the same conference that her agency’s food inspection function, which covers the other 80 percent of the food supply, has “historically” been underfunded and that the agency needs more money to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act, a new law that is supposed to make the foods under FDA’s mandate safer.
Although most of the food industry supported the bill, which is now becoming known by the acronym “FSMA” (pronounced “FISMA”), some industry leaders have resisted its new requirements and the House has been reluctant to give the agency the money it needs to implement it.
“Writing the rule seems like the easy part,” Hamburg said. “We need to be able to invest in compliance,” she said, adding that small business needs to be trained so it can train its work force. “We can’t do what we need to do without a significant infusion of resources.”
Carol Tucker Foreman, a distinguished senior fellow at CFA and former USDA official, suggested that the agency needs to impose user fees, but Hamburg declined to state whether the Obama administration would put forward such a proposal. The House-passed FSMA bill initially contained user fees but they did not survive into the final legislation in the Senate.
Hamburg noted she has appointed Kathleen Gensheimer, a physician and former Maine state official, as chief medical director for the agency.
Hamburg also said the agency is still trying to discover the root cause of the listeria in cantaloupe that has become the deadliest outbreak of food borne illness in the United States in decades.
Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the conference that there are 41,000 fewer health and food safety officials in state and local governments than two years ago. Food safety coordination among agencies has improved at the federal level, he said, but is difficult with states and localities due to the cutbacks in personnel.
Hamburg also said she is “enormously concerned” about the reduction in personnel at the state and local level.
“These are difficult and challenging times,” she said.
The nation’s food safety inspection programs for meat and poultry at the Agriculture Department may be safe from budget cuts, but similar programs at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are vulnerable and cutbacks at the state and local level may also endanger food safety, three key federal officials said Tuesday.
Im least concerned about the food-safety part than any other part” of the USDA budget, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said at a food policy conference sponsored by the Consumer Federation of America. Vilsack said he believes the public is so concerned about food safety that he has told Agriculture Undersecretary for Food Safety Elisabeth Hagen that the budget for the Food Safety and Inspection Service is “untouchable.”
He later told reporters that “food safety is in a different world. All the other [USDA] programs are in a competitive” situtation.
The House-passed fiscal year 2012 Agriculture appropriations bill would cut the FSIS budget by 3.4 percent to $972.7 million, according to a Bloomberg report today, but the House cut other programs in the bill much more. The Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee did not cut the budget for food safety, Bloomberg said. The bill has not come up on the Senate floor yet.
Hagen also said recently that the agency is committed to keeping the meat, poultry and egg products it inspects safe despite the budget pressures. Under the 2008 farm bill, the agency is also supposed to take over inspection of farm-raised catfish, but that rule is held up at the Office of Management and Budget.
But FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg told the same conference that her agency’s food inspection function, which covers the other 80 percent of the food supply, has “historically” been underfunded and that the agency needs more money to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act, a new law that is supposed to make the foods under FDA’s mandate safer.
Although most of the food industry supported the bill, which is now becoming known by the acronym “FSMA” (pronounced “FISMA”), some industry leaders have resisted its new requirements and the House has been reluctant to give the agency the money it needs to implement it.
“Writing the rule seems like the easy part,” Hamburg said. “We need to be able to invest in compliance,” she said, adding that small business needs to be trained so it can train its work force. “We can’t do what we need to do without a significant infusion of resources.”
Carol Tucker Foreman, a distinguished senior fellow at CFA and former USDA official, suggested that the agency needs to impose user fees, but Hamburg declined to state whether the Obama administration would put forward such a proposal. The House-passed FSMA bill initially contained user fees but they did not survive into the final legislation in the Senate.
Hamburg noted she has appointed Kathleen Gensheimer, a physician and former Maine state official, as chief medical director for the agency.
Hamburg also said the agency is still trying to discover the root cause of the listeria in cantaloupe that has become the deadliest outbreak of food borne illness in the United States in decades.
Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the conference that there are 41,000 fewer health and food safety officials in state and local governments than two years ago. Food safety coordination among agencies has improved at the federal level, he said, but is difficult with states and localities due to the cutbacks in personnel.
Hamburg also said she is “enormously concerned” about the reduction in personnel at the state and local level.
“These are difficult and challenging times,” she said.
