Food: Keep the Faith

Americans may be eating meat, dairy products and eggs that aren’t as safe as they should be because the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t been as tough as it could be, a House Government Operations subcommittee says. In a sharply critical report, the subcommittee, which oversees the FDA, charges that the agency has been lax in policing dangerous drugs used to enhance the health and growth of livestock and poultry.

The FDA has “put what it perceives are interests of veterinarians and the livestock industry . . . ahead of its legal obligation to protect consumers from the potentially hazardous residues they may leave in meat, milk and eggs,” said Rep. Ted Weiss (D-N.Y.), the subcommittee chairman.

The subcommittee’s proposed solutions would probably require the FDA to spend more money on its enforcement staff--money that it is not likely to get in the current budget-cutting climate. That’s unfortunate, because skimping on health and safety is not good public policy.

The subcommittee said that as many as 90% of the animal drugs now being sold have not been approved. This means that they haven’t met government standards for safety and efficiency. While the agency cannot monitor every sale at the dealer level, it can enforce a 1972 law that requires drug companies to list their products with the agency. That way the government would at least know what is being made and thus what illegal sales to watch for. The committee also called for a review of approved drugs, because many were cleared a decade and more ago under rules far less stringent than those now in effect.

The Food and Drug Administration also should require companies to devise better methods to detect residues of drugs in meat, the subcommittee said. In some cases no methods of monitoring the retention of drugs in animal tissues have been developed. The agency also has failed to restrict or ban some drugs identified as causing tumors in animals, the subcommittee said.

These are serious charges, and the public deserves a full accounting from the Food and Drug Administration. It has taken decades to develop Americans’ faith in the safety of their food since the days in which filthy conditions in slaughterhouses were first revealed. It takes only a few horror stories to undermine all that confidence. The subcommittee has given fair warning.