Acheson testimony

Here is a link to yesterday's testimony from David Acheson, Assistant Commissioner for Food Protection Food and Drug Administration, before the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration. I don't see here how these remarks translate into FDA asking for more authority; I have a call into the FDA for clarification.

A couple of excerpts:

Despite our progress in the areas of food safety and food defense, recent outbreaks of foodborne illness and the discovery of contaminated food and feed underscore the need to continually improve and adapt to a rapidly growing and changing global economy. Further, these events demonstrate the need to expand our risk based approach to product safety for imported products, expand the use of common information sharing mechanisms, such as the ITDS screening and tracking system maintained by the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and widen information gathering to improve the ability of CBP’s National Targeting Center to focus FDA and CBP prevention and intervention efforts.

Each year, approximately $2 trillion of imported products enter the United States. Experts project that import volume will triple by 2015. In the case of products that FDA regulates, between 2002 and 2006 total imports grew at an average annual rate of 16 percent per year, with foods for human consumption growing by 14 percent.

At FDA, prevention, intervention, and response represent a strategic framework for the safety of food and feed imports as well as the safety of processed foods produced within our borders. Moreover, they serve as a framework for not only food safety, but also food defense.
Prevention is the cornerstone of an effective, proactive food defense and food safety strategy. The implementation of preventive control measures by industry is essential to prevent intentional or unintentional contamination of the food supply. In the prevention arm of FDA’s strategy, FDA will develop scientific and analytical tools to better identify and understand risks and the effectiveness of control measures used to protect the food supply.
Risk-based intervention supplements the prevention arm of FDA’s strategy. Intervention includes monitoring the success of, and identifying weaknesses in, preventive measures. Intervention augments prevention through inspection and sampling techniques that use modern detection technology. Intervention relies on information technology systems to improve FDA’s ability to target and conduct inspection and surveillance, perform laboratory analysis, and achieve reliable 24/7 operations.

The response arm of the FDA strategy reduces the time between detecting and containing foodborne illness. FDA’s recent experience with spinach and leafy greens, melamine, peanut butter, and other contaminated products demonstrates the need for more effective response strategies. FDA must respond faster, communicate more effectively to consumers and FDA food safety partners, and limit economic hardship to the affected industries. FDA must also further integrate response systems with state, local, federal, and international agencies.
Using these three principles, FDA is designing a food safety strategy that better protects the American public and the U.S. economy from food safety and food defense threats.