(MintPress)– The announcement to close nearly 260 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) offices last week to help alleviate a tight budget and cost-cutting came with concernsof how responsibilities would be allocated, particularly in the food safety sector. However, federal regulation of food safety in the United States mandates that a certain number of front-line inspectors must be maintained at food manufacturing plants.
The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) – a branch of the USDA that employs an estimated 6,200 inspectors – is responsible for “ensuring that the nation’s commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled and packaged.” In an Associated Press interview, undersecretary for food safety, Elisabeth Hagan, said cuts to FSIS were only coming from management and support staff and that inspectors and inspections will remain unaltered.H. Scott Hurd, associate professor at Iowa State University and former USDA Deputy Undersecretary for Food Safety, says the number of inspectors will not change unless the law governing food safety is altered.
“The way the law is – and this is the safety net that can make people feel comfortable – there must be USDA inspectors on site whenever plants operate,” Hurd said. “No matter what happens to budgets, unless that law is changed, they always have that safety.”
Amy Kircher, Associate director at Nation Center for Food Protection and Defense, also notes that despite the level of cuts – which are expected to save around $60 million – the number of inspectors will not decrease.
“There’s always the risk if funding happens to be cut that those capabilities could go away and we would want to understand what the impact of that is,” Kircher said. “But at this time, as part of their regulative authority, inspections have to happen. That’s why those services are not cut.”
Despite that fact, Barry Dunn, Dean of the College of Agriculture & Biological Sciences at South Dakota State University, is worried to see any sort of reduction in food safety resources.
“I wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed,” Dunn said. “It represents a disinvestment in American agriculture that I think we all should be concerned about.”
Dunn notes that our culture’s eating habits benefit from government food inspectors.
“All of us should be concerned,” Dunn said. “Food safety is extremely important to us as we eat out more and use more and more processed foods.”
Funding for government programs remains a wild card during a recession when most programs are considered for cuts, reductions or consolidation. Kircher acknowledges that while the USDA cuts came from an administrative level, future cuts could raise uncertainty about USDA structure.“If additional cuts happen in the future, that may become a concern,” Kircher said. “We’re seeing new technology that makes things more efficient, and from what I can see some things would be regionalized, like the regionalization of management.”A change to the system?Criticisms of a complex food safety system in the U.S. raise questions of whether an overhaul of the system is necessary, especially when dealing with the nuances and responsibilities of the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For example, the FDA operates the inspections for fish and fishery products in the U.S. Contrary, FSIS is responsible for the inspection of catfish.These idiosyncrasies raise questions over to what extent an overhaul to the food safety system should be. Kircher says efficiency within the system is always important.
“I think any and all organizations at some point should be reviewed for efficiency and that should be a regular process,” Kircher said. “Would it be beneficial to review that? Absolutely.”
Dunn is also the director of SDSU extension – a program that educates about agriculture and farming practices. Dunn said the state had to review its entire extension system with participating farmers and found ways to improve efficiency. He thinks a similar approach should be taken with government mandated food safety programs.“We should always look for efficiencies. Here in South Dakota we had to rebuild our extension system because of cuts to our federal and state budgets and we did find deficiencies and I think we improved service,” Dunn said. “With that as a model, I think there is opportunity and there is always a challenge for governmental agencies to make things as efficient as possible.”Hurd acknowledges that finding efficiencies are necessary, but warns against oversimplifying food safety into one government identity.“There would just not be any real benefit in it,” Hurd said. “Maybe once upon a time we could have built a system originally that way. But there are incredible costs to build an organization. You would have to blow up all the laws and start over. It’s not feasible.”Source: Mint Press
