Push to Centralize Food Inspections Gets New Life

Worried that bioterrorists might strike next at the nation’s food supplies, the Bush administration is reviving a controversial proposal to bring the government’s patchwork of food safety agencies under one roof.

Government food inspections are now scattered across about a dozen agencies, in sometimes bizarre ways. The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for ensuring the safety of cheese pizza, but the Agriculture Department takes over if there’s a pepperoni topping. Whole eggs are inspected daily by the USDA, but industrial plants that process egg products get annual inspections by the FDA.

Critics say the system, which has been pieced together over the last century, is duplicative, inefficient and inconsistent.

Its most outspoken defenders are the food-processing and agricultural industries, which have grown comfortable with today’s arrangements and fear that change would mean tighter regulation.

Industry has scuttled past attempts at consolidation, but the idea is gaining momentum in light of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the deadly anthrax scares. Thomas J. Ridge, the administration’s homeland security chief, is leading the effort.

“For security enhancement, we ought to at least take a look at whether or not we need to merge functions, merge agencies,” Ridge told a gathering of national security experts recently.

“One agency does chickens and pigs, another agency does vegetables,” Ridge said. “The question is--and we need to consider this in light of homeland security--whether or not we want to have multiple organizations basically tasked with the same responsibility or if we couldn’t enhance our security, improve our efficiency and maybe save a few bucks . . . if we merged functions.”

Ridge did not give himself a deadline but said the administration would begin exploring consolidation options as early as this year. President Bush generally opposes creating new government agencies, and he is thought more likely to favor consolidating inspection responsibilities under an existing agency, such as the FDA.

In addition to the FDA and the Agriculture Department, other agencies that share responsibility for food safety include the Customs Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

“The current system was never designed to deal with the kind of hazards we are grappling with today,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the independent Center for Science in the Public Interest. “We are regulating the food supply today using horse-and-buggy technology.”

The Washington-based group, which supports the creation of a single food-safety agency, says the gaps and differing standards under the current food inspection system have put people in this country’s health at risk.

According to the CDC, 76 million people in the U.S. fall ill every year from food-borne illnesses. Of those, 325,000 are hospitalized; 5,200 die.

Food industry groups, which defeated an attempt to consolidate food safety agencies during the Clinton administration, are worried about the renewed effort.

Ridge’s comments “have caused some heartburn for us,” said Kelly Johnston, executive vice president and lobbyist for the National Food Processors Assn. “The truth is, the system is not broken.”

Johnston said his group worries that overhauling the current system when security concerns are heightened might create havoc at a particularly sensitive time. “We need to make sure the existing systems are in place so consumers have confidence.”

But there appears to be growing interest within the Bush administration to explore consolidation. As a presidential candidate, George W. Bush voiced support for the idea. And though Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson has taken no formal position on consolidation, he repeatedly has said that terrorist attacks against the nation’s food supplies are among his biggest concerns.

“To have that kind of leadership behind this issue can make the difference,” said Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), who has sponsored legislation since 1998 that would consolidate responsibility for food safety. “We need to bring it all under one roof. In the past, we’ve spent our time talking about this as a way to modernize food safety. Now it’s a question of security and bioterrorism.”

Durbin and other supporters of a single food-safety agency say consolidation would provide more accountability, allow for faster responses to terrorist attacks and enable the government to deploy its resources more efficiently.

Accidents Were Main Focus in the Past

The differences in the way similar foods are inspected today have more to do with bureaucratic history than with science.

The FDA, which was established as part of the Agriculture Department, took with it the authority to oversee processed foods when it was moved out of the department in 1940. That gave it jurisdiction over pizza, for example, but the USDA’s long-established responsibility for meat and poultry trumped the FDA when pepperoni was added to the pizza.

In the past, the agencies have focused on preventing accidental contamination and isolated tampering incidents, such as a 1984 action by an Oregon group to poison a salad bar in an attempt to lower turnout for a local election.

The USDA, FDA and CDC have worked together on some food-safety systems, such as FoodNet, which investigates diseases caused by food-borne pathogens, and PulseNet, a network of labs that compare food bacterium samples collected in different locations. But the networks do not yet operate nationwide.

Industry Looks to Head Off Regulation

The lack of a comprehensive plan to respond to a possible terrorist attack on the nation’s agriculture and food-processing industries is a “glaring exception to the wide-ranging emphasis that has been given to critical infrastructure protection in this country,” Rand Corp. analyst Peter Chalk told the Senate Governmental Affairs Oversight subcommittee last month.

A bioterrorism bill introduced in the Senate this month would provide an additional $500 million for food safety.

The bill would require food processors to register with the federal government and give regulators greater authority to look at company records, Durbin said. He added that he plans to offer an amendment to the bill that would give the government power to order food recalls and impose fines on companies.

Industry groups are mobilizing to head off increased government regulation. After the Sept. 11 attacks, about 90 food-processing and agriculture groups created the Alliance for Food Security to improve communication between the industry and government.

The group also is drafting some self-regulatory guidelines, such as requiring background checks on food-processing employees and installing security cameras in plants, Johnston said.

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