Each year, food-related illnesses sicken 48 million people, 128,000 of whom require hospitalization and 3,000 of whom die. In an effort to address this problem, Congress passed a 2011 law that compelled the FDA to focus on preventing these infections, as opposed to just reacting to them. A new report from the Government Accountability Office finds that the FDA is not fulfilling some of its responsibilities to protect Americans from food-borne illness. The FDA is legally obligated to oversee the safety of nearly 80% of the country’s food supply.
Although the FDA has created framework to reduce food contamination, it has failed to fulfill some of its duties under the law (for example, a new guidance to assist growers in lowering food contamination risk). The agency also has not evaluated whether its new policies have succeeded in preventing food-related illness.
The Government Office of Accountability report includes seven recommendations the FDA should implement to fulfill its duties to prevent such illnessness, for example: The creation of deadlines producing for food safety reports, providing updates on the implementation of a national food emergency response laboratory network, updating guidelines for agricultural practices for produce, and establishing a plan for product tracing to improve responses to outbreaks.
