In the past three years, the FDA has cut back its food safety program by cutting its science staff by 20 percent and losing 600 food safety inspectors, according to the report.
However, on Wednesday, the FDA announced that over the next few months it will be hiring 1,300 biologists, chemists, medical officers, mathematical statisticians and investigators. However, how many of these new positions will be devoted to food safety isn't clear, Levi said.
The report also criticized the number of federal agencies involved in food safety. For example, the FDA regulates frozen pizza, unless there is meat on it, in which case, it is regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Moreover, only 1 percent of imported food is inspected, even though about 60 percent of fresh fruits and vegetables and 75 percent of seafood is imported.
Recommendations to fix these problems include:
- Start inspecting foods throughout the entire food production and processing chain.
- Enact procedures that will allow the inspection system to be updated as changes occur.
- Establish standard practices of authority for recall and penalties.
- Improve inspection of imported foods.
- Increase FDA funding to improve food safety.
Ultimately, Levi thinks a new federal agency should be responsible for all food safety.
"The goal should be to consolidate and align all federal food safety functions into a single agency, to increase effectiveness, responsibility and accountability," Levi said. "The agency could then address the food supply as a whole and set priorities accordingly."
"Some of the critique is right, but we differ with them on some of their recommendations," said Patty Lovera, assistant director of the consumer watchdog group, Food & Water Watch. "There is a little too much optimism in the report."
One of the problems is that the FDA has not been forthcoming on what it needs to improve food safety, Lovera said.
"The FDA keeps coming to Congress and saying they aren't able to assess what they need," she said. "They need to come up with a number about what it would take to improve oversight."
