Food Marketing Institute Urges Single Food Safety Agency

Food & Drink Weekly, May 29, 2000

New food products, technology and bacteria are reasons enough for the trade group Food Marketing Institute (FMI) to back the idea of a single food agency. According to a white paper issued at FMI's recent annual board meeting, the group says the time now has come to consider a major change in the way foods are regulated and monitored in the United States. "We believe that designating a single agency responsible for the safety of our food is essential if we are to maintain a food supply that remains the envy of the world," says the report.

The food industry has changed greatly since U.S. regulators first began inspecting, enforcing and monitoring a century ago. FMI says challenges to regulators include diets vastly different than a century ago, accompanied by a dramatic expansion of foods prepared and eaten away from home; new breeding, processing and preservation technologies unknown when our current system was designed; true globalization of our food supply presenting challenges reaching beyond our own borders; and the emergence of new, virulent foodborne pathogens that require a coordinated prevention and control strategy reaching across all commodity groups. "Our current regulatory system is ill-equipped to deal with these challenges. More than a dozen federal agencies have jurisdiction over various parts of our food supply. This patchwork quilt creates inconsistencies, gaps, overlaps and duplication of effort that are becoming increasingly unworkable," says FMI.

It is not just that our current complex and fragmented system creates gaps and overlaps. It is that various U.S. agencies use very different approaches, often mandated by law, to address the very same issues depending on jurisdiction. Products that are perceived as identical in the minds of consumers are often regulated by different agencies administering different approaches because jurisdiction is frequently split, says FMI.

In addition to the obvious inconsistencies, the current system is designed more to encourage rivalries between the agencies than to foster cooperation, according to the white paper. Today, each individual agency battles for its own authority and budget. Seemingly arbitrary divisions of authority that have arisen over time invite agencies to step over their boundaries at the expense of another regulatory body in an attempt to expand their turf and, therefore, their budgets. This wasteful rivalry also can develop for more subtle reasons, says FMI.

FMI suggests five guiding principles on how best to make decisions about a single food safety agency. The single food safety agency must: 1) build on the credibility already established with U.S. international trading partners and consumers; 2) have total authority for all federal food safety oversight activities including approval, inspection, labeling, research and responsibility for monitoring and managing disease outbreaks; 3) integrate federal food safety activities with those of state and local agencies; 4) have oversight from production to consumption that is science-based; and 5) be equally dedicated to assuring the safety of all foods imported into the United States.

FMI's push for a single food agency goes against the grain of similar industry food groups who have maintained a coordinated approach with the existing system is the best method to ensure the best food safety. Both the National Food Processors Association and Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA) agree the U.S. food safety system needs a change in focus, but not in structure, and GMA says policymakers should avoid "knee-jerk" reactions to calls for greater regulation. FMI's push also goes against the President's Council on Food Safety who early last year rejected the National Academy of Sciences recommendation for a single food safety agency, also preferring to strengthen the current system.