Federal Oversight of Food Safety: FDA Has Provided Few Details on the Resources and Strategies Needed to Implement its Food Protection Plan
Released: 2008-06-12T00:00:00

Letter

FDA Has Added Few Details on the Resources and Strategies Required to Implement Its Food Protection Plan

In light of the federal government’s long-term fiscal challenges, it is critical that agencies can justify the needed resources and develop effective, efficient strategies to achieve their mission. We testified in January 2008 that, while FDA officials had acknowledged that implementing the Food Protection Plan would require additional resources, FDA had not provided specific information on the resources it anticipates the agency will need to implement this plan to improve its oversight of food safety. For example, the Food Protection Plan proposes to enhance FDA’s information technology systems related to both domestic and imported foods which the Science Board report suggests could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. At that time, FDA officials stated they would provide specific information on how much additional funding would be necessary to implement the Food Protection Plan when the President’s budget was publicly released in the coming weeks.

In its fiscal year 2008 budget, FDA received approximately $620 million for food protection, an increase of about $56 million over fiscal year 2007, and directed $48 million of that amount toward implementing the Food Protection Plan, according to FDA. FDA requested approximately $662 million for food safety for fiscal year 2009, an increase of about $42 million over fiscal year 2008. According to the Department of Health and Human Services’ budget justification, FDA plans to direct the $42 million to strategic actions described in its Food Protection Plan. As shown in table 1, the plan outlines spending on all three core elements of the Food Protection Plan––a total of about $21 million for prevention, about $34 million for intervention, and about $23 million for response for fiscal years 2008 and 2009. FDA also reported that, in fiscal year 2008, the agency intends to hire nearly 1,500 full time equivalents (FTE), including approximately 730 to fill vacant positions. Of these, 161 will be new FTEs funded by congressional increases dedicated to food safety activities. In addition, in fiscal year 2009, FDA plans to hire 94 new FTEs for food safety activities.

Furthermore, in May 2008, FDA’s Commissioner of Food and Drugs provided his professional judgment in response to a congressional request of FDA’s immediate resource needs to implement key initiatives across the core elements of the Food Protection Plan. The Commissioner called for an additional $125 million for food protection in fiscal year 2008 beyond the $48 million that FDA had already allocated for implementing the Food Protection Plan in this fiscal year. According to the Commissioner, this increase will allow FDA to address some of the plan’s strategic actions, such as identifying and targeting the greatest threats from intentional and unintentional contamination and conducting more risk-based inspections. The Commissioner’s assessment also calls for 250 additional FTEs to accomplish the goals of the Food Protection Plan. After the Commissioner provided his assessment of FDA’s resource needs, the Senate passed an Iraq War Supplemental that included an additional $119 million for food safety to be available through fiscal year 2009. In addition, on June 9, 2008, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Administration is amending its fiscal year 2009 budget request to include, in part, a $125 million increase for food safety. This amount would add to the $42 million increase originally proposed in the fiscal year 2009 budget justification (see table 1) and appears to be consistent with the Commissioner’s professional judgment response. To accompany this amendment, FDA has posted information on steps it is taking to invest in its transformation in areas such as domestic medical products, import products, and domestic food safety. For example, under transforming domestic food safety, FDA reports that it issued final fresh cut produce guidance to limit contamination of fresh-cut fruits and vegetables. In addition, FDA conducted inspections and took action against processors of low acid canned foods that were deviating from required standards.

In addition, in January 2008, we testified that the Food Protection Plan does not discuss the strategies it needs in the upcoming years to implement this plan. When we asked FDA for more specificity on the strategies for implementing the plan, FDA officials told us that they have internal plans for implementing the Food Protection Plan that detail timelines, staff actions, and specific deliverables. More recently, a senior level FDA official provided us with an estimate of 5 years for fully implementing the plan. However, FDA has not provided us with timelines for the various strategies described in the plan. For example, under the plan’s strategic action 2.3—to improve the detection of food system “signals” that indicate contamination (see table 1)—FDA has recently identified three additional action steps with deliverables that will be needed to identify, develop, and deploy new screening tools and methods to identify pathogens and other contaminants. However, FDA could not provide us with an estimate of how long it would take to implement these steps or the overall strategic action. Without this type of information, we are not able to assess whether FDA’s estimated 5-year time frame is feasible.

Similarly, while FDA’s Food Protection Plan recognizes the need to partner with Congress to obtain 10 additional statutory authorities to transform the safety of the nation’s food supply, FDA’s congressional outreach strategy is general. When we asked FDA officials if they had a congressional outreach strategy, FDA officials told us that they had met with various congressional committees to discuss the Food Protection Plan. When asked if they had provided draft language to congressional committees on the various authorities, FDA officials explained that they only provided technical assistance, such as commenting on draft bills, to congressional staff when asked.

FDA appears to be refining its implementation plan over time. Most recently, in June 2008, FDA provided us with a draft work plan that it characterizes as a dynamic document that changes on a daily basis to implement the Food Protection Plan. While this draft work plan provides more information on the action steps and deliverables to achieve the core elements, we continue to have concerns about FDA’s lack of specificity on the necessary resources and strategies to fully implement the plan. For example, as part of the plan’s strategic action 1.1—to promote increased corporate responsibility to prevent foodborne illnesses (see table 1)—FDA has identified a goal of analyzing food import trend data and focusing inspections based on risk, and the draft work plan shows six deliverables, such as analysis of import data sets and an import risk ranking, associated with this goal. However, the timelines for these deliverables are unclear. In addition, the agency plans to dedicate a total of $673,000 to this goal in fiscal years 2008 and 2009, and FDA officials told us that the agency considers this funding to be a down payment toward achieving this goal. However, it is unclear what the total cost will be to meet this goal. While the work plan provides some basic information, more specific information, such as estimated resources needed to implement the various strategies— the core elements, goals, and deliverables—as well as the overall plan and timeframes for implementing the strategies, are needed to assess FDA’s progress in implementing the plan or in acquiring the resources and authorities it needs.

Anticipating the cost of the overall plan is important because, while some activities, such as meeting with industry experts to discuss corporate responsibility, may be accomplished within one budget cycle, others, such as the establishment of an FDA field office in China will likely require a long-term commitment of agency resources. From the information we have obtained on the Food Protection Plan, it is unclear what FDA’s overall resource need is for implementing the plan. The overall resource need could be significant. For example, if FDA were to inspect each of the approximately 65,500 domestic food firms regulated by FDA, at the Commissioner’s May 2008 estimate of $8,000 for a domestic food safety inspection, it would cost approximately $524 million to inspect all of these facilities once. Similarly, if FDA were to inspect each of the 189,000 registered foreign facilities (which includes facilities that manufacture, process, pack, or hold foods consumed by Americans) at the Commissioner’s estimated cost of $16,700 per inspection, it would cost FDA approximately $3.16 billion to inspect all of these facilities once. These figures underscore the need for FDA to focus safety inspections based on risk.

Ultimately, a results-oriented organization needs to take a long-term view of the goals it wants to accomplish and describe them in a strategic plan. To facilitate congressional oversight, strategic plans should discuss (1) long-term goals and objectives for all major functions; (2) approaches to achieve the goals and objectives, and in particular the required resources including human capital and information technology; (3) a relationship between the long-term goals and the annual performance goals; and (4) an identification of key factors that could significantly affect achievement of the strategic goals. Such discussions in the Food Protection Plan could help clarify FDA’s organizational priorities to the Congress, other stakeholders, and the public.

Lastly, when we testified before this subcommittee in January, we reported that FDA planned to keep the public informed of their progress on implementing the Food Protection Plan. In addition, in March 2008, FDA officials indicated that a progress report on actions taken to implement the Food Protection Plan would be issued in April 2008. In May, FDA officials told us that they had prepared a draft progress report, but as of June 4, 2008, FDA had not made this report public. FDA officials told us that the progress report is still being cleared by the Department of Health and Human Services, and they could not provide us with the report until it was cleared by the department. Instead, FDA officials provided us with a broad overview of FDA’s actions and, subsequently, provided us with a list of accomplishments drawn out of numerous public documents. For example, FDA issued a Federal Register Notice to solicit stakeholder comments on the implementation of the Food Protection Plan as part of a broad outreach plan.

We have noted that public reporting is the means through which the federal government communicates the results of its work to the Congress and the American people. Such reporting is in the public interest and promotes transparency in government operations. While it is important to show what progress has been made, having such information in a consolidated document at a readily accessible location reassures Congress and the public that actions have been taken.

FDA’s Proposal to Focus Inspections Based on Risk Can Help Target Scarce Resources

The Food Protection Plan identifies the need to focus safety inspections based on risk, which is particularly important as the numbers of food firms have increased while inspections have decreased. In its Food Protection Plan, FDA has identified some actions to better identify food vulnerabilities and assess risks. For example, FDA plans to use enhanced modeling capability, scientific data, and technical expertise to evaluate and prioritize the relative risks of specific food and animal feed agents that may be harmful. According to FDA officials, the agency has assigned a risk-based steering committee to identify models for ranking and prioritizing risk.

Conducting inspections based on risk has the potential to be an efficient and effective approach for FDA to target scarce resources, particularly when the number of inspections has not kept pace with the growth in firms between 2001 and 2007. Specifically, while the number of domestic firms under FDA’s jurisdiction increased from about 51,000 to more than 65,500, the number of firms inspected declined slightly, from 14,721 to 14,566. FDA also reported declines in the number of inspections at overseas firms between 2001 and 2007—even as the United States has imported hundreds of thousands of different food products from tens of thousands of foreign food firms in more than 150 countries. Appendix I has information on the number of FDA inspections of food firms in foreign countries from fiscal years 2001 through 2007.

GAO Has Issued Recommendations Intended to Help Leverage Resources and Improve Operations, but FDA Has Implemented Few of Them

FDA has implemented few of our past recommendations to improve food safety oversight. Our recommendations are designed to correct identified problems and improve programs and operations. We have made 34 food safety related recommendations to FDA since 2004 and, as of May 2008, FDA has implemented 7. For the remaining recommendations, FDA has not fully implemented them, however, in some cases, FDA has taken some steps. As shown in table 2, these recommendations fall into two broad categories: improving monitoring and enforcement processes and leveraging resources. The planned activities in the Food Protection Plan could help address several of these recommendations.

In light of the federal government’s long-term fiscal challenges, agencies, including FDA, need to seek out opportunities to better leverage their resources. We have made 13 recommendations to help FDA better leverage its resources since 2004, and FDA has implemented 4 of them. In a January 2004 report regarding seafood safety, we recommended that, among other things, FDA make it a priority to establish equivalence agreements with other countries. We found that such agreements would shift some of FDA’s oversight burden to foreign governments. FDA did not concur with this recommendation, and as of May 2008, has not yet established equivalence agreements with any foreign countries. In the same report, we recommended that FDA give priority to taking enforcement actions when violations that pose the most serious health risk occur; consider the cost and benefits of implementing an accreditation program for private laboratories; and explore the potential of implementing a certification program for third-party inspectors. Although FDA concurred with these recommendations and has taken some limited action such as requesting public comments on the use of third-party certification programs, none were fully implemented. The Food Protection Plan requests that Congress allow the agency to enter into agreements with exporting countries to certify that foreign producers’ shipments of high-risk products comply with FDA standards.

Since 2004, we have made 21 recommendations to FDA to improve monitoring and enforcement processes, and FDA has implemented 3 of them. For example, in October 2004, we recommended that FDA develop a sound methodology for district staff to verify that companies have quickly and effectively carried out recalls. At the time of our review, we found that FDA was not calculating the recovery rate for recalls. As a result, the agency did not know how much food was actually recovered, although the agency told us recovery was an important indicator of a successful recall. FDA initially commented that we had not demonstrated that weaknesses in FDA’s recall process resulted in little recovery of food, but as of May 2008, the agency is in the process of conducting a quality management system review of its recall activities and, once the review is completed, it will include recommendations for verifying that a company’s recall was effective, according to FDA.

To conclude, FDA’s release of the Food Protection Plan is a positive first step toward modernizing FDA’s approach to food safety to better meet the challenges of an increasingly global food supply and respond to shifting demographics and consumption patterns. Given that FDA’s resources have not kept pace with its increasing responsibilities, FDA’s plan to take a risk- based approach to inspections could help FDA make the most effective and efficient use of its limited resources. However, FDA’s Food Protection Plan can only be as effective as its implementation, and without specificity on the resources and strategies needed to fully implement the plan—and in the absence of public reporting—neither Congress nor the public can gauge the plan’s progress or assess its likelihood of success in achieving its intended results. In addition, no one is better poised than FDA to identify the resources and authorities needed to implement the plan; therefore, FDA’s capacity to provide such information can be questioned. Meanwhile, as foodborne illness outbreaks continue, FDA is missing valuable opportunities to reassure Congress and the public that it is doing all it can to protect the nation’s food supply.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be pleased to respond to any questions that you or other Members of the Subcommittee may have.

Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this statement. For further information about this testimony, please contact Lisa Shames, Director, Natural Resources and Environment at (202) 512-3841 or shamesl@gao.gov. Key contributors to this statement were José Alfredo Gómez, Assistant Director; Kevin Bray; Candace Carpenter; Alison Gerry Grantham; Thomas McCabe; Alison O’Neill; and Barbara Patterson.

Appendix I: Number of FDA Inspections of Food Firms in Foreign Countries, as of December 2007

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