A new bill has been introduced in the Senate for the U.S. to establish a single food safety agency! No, you’re not reading an old article that we accidentally republished, although this same sentence could have been used numerous times over the last 30 years. It could be from even further back with a slight verbiage change from a bill being introduced in the Senate to a recommendation being made by the General Accounting Office (GAO).
In fact, Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), who introduced the new bill, has been working for the creation of a single, independent federal food safety agency since his election to the Senate in 1996. A fact which is verified by the eight times he sponsored or cosponsored a bill entitled “Safe Food Act of [year]” in 1997, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2015, 2019 (with the 10-year gap between 2005 and 2015 likely due to his cosponsoring of FSMA).
Similarly the General Accounting Office (GAO) has consistently recommended the creation of a single federal food safety agency since at least 1994, at which time the GAO’s response to a congressional request for recommendations to improve the federal food safety system, included “the government should create a single, independent food safety agency responsible for enforcing a uniform set of laws to resolve longstanding problems, dealing with emerging food safety issues, and ensuring a safe food supply.”
But, along with the name change from Safe Food Act to Federal Food Administration Act, Durbin included a notable change in focus. Before we get to that, let’s cover the basics of the bill: The overall goal of the proposed legislation is to transfer FDA’s food authorities and establish a single food safety agency “solely focused on keeping the foods that we eat, safe,” i.e., separate from the drug side of the current FDA. It would establish the Federal Food Administration as a single agency that would take over the food responsibilities of the FDA to ensure the safety of the U.S. food supply and promote good nutrition. The Federal Food Administration would fall under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and incorporate the existing food programs within FDA including the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), Office of Food Policy and Response (OFPR), and the Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA). It would be led by an expert confirmed by the Senate.
A very prominent aspect that this bill does not address, however, is the consolidation of USDA responsibilities into the single agency. Although that had been a part of previous Safe Food Act bills, included in GAO recommendations, and proposed by both the previous Trump (recommending that the single agency be housed within the USDA) and Obama administrations (recommending it be housed in the USDA), the new bill focuses specifically, and only, on the FDA.
Relative to the bill’s focus on FDA, perhaps after three decades of trying, Durbin feels that baby steps are a better approach; that the bill may be able to ride on the heels of FDA’s newly approved reorganization. Then, once completed (with Durbin’s toes and fingers likely all crossed for that to happen), a new bill adding USDA responsibilities could have a better chance of passing.
It may not be a bad bet at that. With FDA, itself, currently acknowledging its issue and organizational challenges, and set to finalize reorganization this fall, the Durbin bill may have at least a better chance of consideration. On the other hand, it may be that decision makers choose to give the FDA’s efforts a chance before throwing a new wrench into the works.
Either way, working with one agency at a time would certainly simplify things, but would it be seen as making enough difference to bother with at this point? When considering the pros and cons of a single agency, there seem to be very few cons … beyond the process of getting us there. As stated in a 2017 GAO report, the U.S. food supply is “governed by a highly complex system stemming from at least 30 federal laws that are administered by 16 federal agencies” and “supplemented by states, localities, tribes, and territories, which may have their own laws and agencies to address food safety and quality. In all, more than 3,000 non-federal agencies perform the great majority of government food safety activities.”
As I stated back then, that range of governance makes consolidation and defragmentation more complex than simply moving FDA food safety functions to USDA or USDA to FDA. So, while I have always been an advocate of a single food safety agency and feel it is an ideal for which we should strive, I am also realistic in recognizing that it is an incredible challenge. It will take careful step-by-step planning and gradual alignment, taking all aspects of all the current agencies and industry needs into consideration. Perhaps Durbin’s downgraded focus to only FDA in the newest bill, along with consideration of the FDA’s own reorganization, could be the first baby step in that new direction.
As a final question, I have to wonder why now? Over the last two years or so we have gone through a complex and costly review of the food safety programs as part of the Reagen Udall Foundation work. One of the suggestions from the review was to go down the pathway of a single food safety agency. The FDA landed on a solution that is not even implemented yet, and despite that, we now have calls for something different. Is this a vote of no confidence in the proposed changes or the current FDA leadership? Or is it just Senator Durbin raising an old issue that he feels is too important to ignore and too important to leave to a simple reshuffle of what is already in place at FDA.
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