The U.S. food supply is generally considered safe, but tens of millions of people get sick from foodborne illnesses each year. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report examining the reasons for the apparent safety gap.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for ensuring the safety of nearly 80% of the nation's food supply. But the GAO report showed that the FDA has struggled to meet its inspection targets for both domestic and foreign food facilities.
Since 2018, it has failed to meet these targets, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The FDA conducts inspections to prevent foodborne illnesses, but the report revealed that they have not been able to inspect all high-risk facilities on time, and foreign facility inspections were well below the mandated targets. The FDA attributed these issues to a lack of staffing and unrealistic goals for foreign facility inspections.
In its report, the GAO found that the FDA has not set clear targets for foreign inspections and recommended the agency develop better processes and performance measures to ensure efficient use of resources.
They also suggested that the FDA improve its recruitment and retention of investigators and take steps to reduce missed inspections. The GAO is urging Congress to help by adjusting the inspection targets to better match resources.
Recommendations
GAO is recommending that Congress consider directing FDA to determine the annual number of foreign food facility inspections needed to ensure the safety of imported food and communicate this information to Congress. Once received, Congress should consider updating FDA’s foreign inspection annual target.
Also, GAO is making three recommendations to FDA. GAO recommends that FDA
(1) determine the appropriate size and workload of its foreign investigator cadre
(2) identify and implement additional procedures to minimize incidences of attempted inspections of domestic food facilities, and
(3) develop and implement a formal performance management process focused on its food safety inspection efforts. FDA concurred with the recommendations.