Overseeing the U.S. Food Supply: Steps Should be Taken to Reduce Overlapping Inspections and Related Activities Page: 3 of 30
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Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
I am pleased to be here today to address the Subcommittee's interest in
examining the potential for reorganizing the federal system for ensuring
the safety of the U.S. food supply. As the Comptroller General recently
testified, there is a need to bring government and its programs in line with
21st century realities.' He noted that many, if not most, current federal
programs and policies, were designed decades ago to respond to trends
and challenges that existed at the time. These programs can be updated
and modernized by improving their targeting and efficiency through,
among other things, consolidating facilities and programs and streamlining
and reengineering operations and processes. The Comptroller General
specifically cited the federal food safety system as an area where
opportunities for crosscutting program integration exist.
In testimony last year before this Subcommittee, we described the
fragmented nature of our federal food safety system-one based on 30
principal laws related to food safety that are administered by 15 agencies.2
We stated that the patchwork nature of the system governing inspection
and related activities hampers efforts to address the risks of inadvertent or
deliberate food contamination. Under this system, different agencies are
responsible for specific food commodities and have significantly different
authorities for carrying out these responsibilities. As a result, federal
agencies are spending resources on similar activities to ensure that the
food supply is safe, wholesome, and appropriately labeled. For example,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspectors examine seafood
processors; U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors examine
meat- and poultry-processing facilities; and both agencies inspect the same
food-processing facilities if the facilities produce food products under the
jurisdiction of both agencies. For example, USDA inspects a canning
facility that produces soup containing meat or poultry; if the facility also
produces soup containing seafood, FDA inspects it as well. USDA spent
$665 million and FDA spent $219 million, totaling $884 million-and
dedicated 8,787 and 1,844 full-time equivalent staff, respectively-for
inspection and enforcement activities in fiscal year 2003. USDA and FDA
provided updated expenditures for fiscal year 2004 totaling $958 million-
1GAO, 21st Century Challenges: Reexamining the Base of the Federal Government,
GAO-05-352T (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 16, 2005).
2GAO, Federal Food Safety and Security System: Fundamental Restructuring is Needed
to Address Fragmentation and Overlap, GAO-04-588T (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 30, 2004).GAO-05-549T
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United States. Government Accountability Office. Overseeing the U.S. Food Supply: Steps Should be Taken to Reduce Overlapping Inspections and Related Activities, text, May 17, 2005; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc290858/m1/3/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.