Protecting a nation from tainted food and unsafe drugs in the age of globalization is a daunting and complex job. But it’s not impossible. Americans have a right to expect that it be done right and done now.
It hasn’t been. We’ve had poisonous peppers and tainted tomatoes, adulterated anti-clotting drugs and, just last week, the second major recall in less than a month involving the same beef processing plant in Omaha. All that in 2008 alone.
Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach, who heads the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, met in St. Louis this week with state health and agricultural officials from around the nation. The topic was food safety and the crucial role state agencies play in protecting the nation. After the meeting’s opening session, he sat down with Post-Dispatch editorial writers and news reporters.
Part of his mission was to manage expectations. The FDA’s annual budget is nearly $2 billion. It recently received an infusion of another $150 million, with $275 million more promised for next year. But its responsibilities more than match that jumbo bottom line.
The FDA is supposed to safeguard the safety of all food except meat and poultry, a task that’s become exponentially more difficult now that 60 percent of what Americans eat — including 80 percent of all seafood — comes from sources abroad.
Those responsibilities are in addition to the agency’s role overseeing prescription and over-the-counter drugs; labeling of cosmetics and ensuring the safety of medical devices and biologics such as vaccines, blood and human tissue used in surgery.

Dr. von Eschenbach was named acting head of the FDA in 2005, when the agency was losing staff because of low salaries, budget cuts and political interference in regulatory decision-making. It had been chronically underfunded for at least two decades. Respected former FDA Commissioner David Kessler told Congress last year that the nation’s food safety program “is broken.”
Given the sheer scale of the agency’s responsibilities and the severe limits of its resources, Dr. von Eschenbach said Tuesday that recent headlines about food-borne illness such as the salmonella Saintpaul outbreak linked to tainted peppers and tomatoes this summer actually reveal how well the system works. He pointed to organizational and structural changes designed to prevent future outbreaks by identifying and inspecting high-risk products and producers.

Clearly, there is some validity to his points. But they provide no comfort to consumers who have seen one regulatory failure after another in recent years — from lead-tainted toys to poisoned pet food and dangerously unsafe drugs.
The agency does not have the authority to order recalls of tainted products; it must rely, instead, on the cooperation of food processors. Such cooperation has not always come quickly or completely.
Nor is the FDA empowered to mandate a system to track products “from farm to fork.” The salmonella outbreak illustrates why that’s needed.

Meanwhile, the entire system relies on state and local public health agencies to spot and investigate outbreaks quickly, but states and cities are tightening their belts. Public health agencies always are an easy target for budget cutters, even in relatively good times.
When is it fair for consumers to expect the FDA’s long-promised protections to be in place? “In three to five years,” Dr. von Eschenbach said. “I like to think of it as a linear process. Tomorrow will be better than yesterday.”
Yesterday is not nearly soon enough.Noton’sCapital

Post-Dispatch file photo of spinach field. Photo illustration by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com