Question and answers : Is a single food safety agency best?

Relating to the Fresh Talk poll question this week, I asked a question on the Food Safe message board about the wisdom of creating a single food safety agency. Here is my question and a few responses from the group. The NACMSF refers to the National Advisory Committee on. Microbiological Criteria for Food. As you can see, there is a difference of opinion among food safety professionals about broad reform.


Congress will likely push hard for a single food safety agency next year, led by Rosa DeLauro and Dingell and others.Would creating a a unified food safety agency be a positive long term move for food safety efforts in this country? Are there are strong opinions yea or nay about tihs issue among the Food Safe group? Tom K


Tom,

A single agency isn't going to help a lot. What they need is a single group to write the process standards that all the agencies and inspectors have to use, and we have that, the NACMSF. Give the NACMSF the funds to let contracts with labs to get the science to write one set of processing rules that the retail uses, Fish HACCP, FDA processing uses and FSIS uses. That is what is wrong. Every agency wants there own cooling, pasteurization, acidification etc, and you don't know the research basis for the control. For the last 15 years, the NACMSF has been used by both FDA and FSIS as the group to write unified process rules and it seems to work.

Pete




Yes, I've come to the conclusion that for political reasons a single federal food agency is required. The FDA and their funding is one problem, the USDA and their other roles (agricultural marketing) is another. A "naked" regulatory agency covering all foods may show more clearly where the shortcomings are in either the executive, legislative , or judicial branches of the government and where industry may be using its influence to the disadvantage of the public at large.
Jeff Lewis



I can't agree with Carl more about the need to communicate with your members of Congress about the strong need to fix things at the federal level in food safety during this upcoming election. Let them know that we are "fed up" with all the problems and gaps in the system.
While I believe that the Single Agency would be the best answer to the problems, I'm not certain that it can be done quickly. For this reason we are working on some smaller steps to address funding deficiences and gaps in authority at FDA. There is some progress and promising developments. Clearly if it doesn't happen this year (and time is too short to think it will), many of these ideas will emerge early in the next Congress.
So communicating with your own members will help to move the ball now and in the future.

Caroline Smith DeWaal
Food Safety Director
Center for Science in the Public Interest




Everyone knows what a busy body I am so with that in mind, I suggested to Dr. Acheson directly that he make the model food code into a closed loop model food code "Wiki".
That would allow everyone to add and contribute within a 12 month period and at the end of the year the CFP would look over the changes, add issues and on January 1 of each year the public version would be online.
Any registered user, with qualification, would be able to submit changes like on Wikipedia, Then the CDC, FDA, ARS, ERS and other agencies could add or modify what they see and then click on "submit", perhaps it would require three approvals to publish but changes would be not only up to date but relevant to the needs of today.
This fits in tightly with what Pete said below.
"That is what is wrong. Every agency wants their own cooling, pasteurization, acidification etc, and you don't know the research basis for the control. For the last 15 years, the NACMSF has been used by both FDA and FSIS as the group to write unified process rules and it seems to work."

Rich