News Brief

The Government Accountability Office has released a report on its investigation into the Food and Drug Administration:

“While FDA has considered fresh produce safety a priority for many years, resource constraints and other work — including counterterrorism efforts and unplanned events such as foodborne illness outbreaks — have caused FDA to delay key produce safety activities,” the GAO report reads.

“FDA has no formal program devoted exclusively to fresh produce and has not consistently and reliably tracked its fresh produce spending.”

It said the FDA spent at least $20 million or about 3 percent of its food safety dollars on fresh produce in 2007.

The fresh produce industry has indicated it would welcome stronger regulation, especially after outbreaks of Salmonella carried by peppers from Mexico and that sickened 1,400 people from April to August of this year and an E. coli epidemic in 2006, traced to California spinach, that killed three.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach defended the agency: “We have not been sitting idly by doing nothing with regard to food protection — quite the contrary. A number of very significant things have occurred … It’s a work in progress, and it will continuously go on and continuously improve … There’s much more to come.”