Slow progress in protecting U.S. food supply

— -- Almost seven years ago, the Food and Drug Administration proposed a way to help prevent unsafe food imports from getting to U.S. consumers.

Food shipments rejected at a U.S. port for safety reasons would be marked "UNITED STATES REFUSED ENTRY" to discourage unscrupulous importers from trying to sneak them in through another U.S. port with fewer or less-suspicious inspectors. Congress added the FDA's so-called "port shopping" rule to the high-profile Bioterrorism Act enacted in 2002.

Despite broad support then — and renewed calls by Congress to tighten food import oversight — the marking law has yet to take hold. The FDA has yet to set specifications on such details as how big the mark should be and where it should go. Meanwhile, some importers still try to sneak in refused goods, says a recent Bush administration report on imported-food safety.

The fact that FDA-regulated refused foods aren't marked "is a failure of the FDA," says former FDA senior associate commissioner William Hubbard, who left the agency in 2005.

But it's just one of many proposed solutions to long-standing problems with food imports that have been delayed, derailed or ignored by the FDA, Congress and the food industry while imports have soared in the past decade. The measures withered because of lack of funds, lack of political will, competing priorities and industry opposition, say former FDA officials and current lawmakers. And while recent tainted imports from China have spawned a slew of import-safety bills in Congress, the slow trek of the port-shopping law tempers expectations of quick and effective change.

"We have a scare … and food imports flows to the top of the public policy attention span," says Tommy Thompson, who resigned in 2005 as secretary of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA. "But by the time Congress gets around to appropriating money, concern has ebbed again."

Import-safety proposals that have recently resurfaced include calls for:

•Stronger standards in foreign countries. The FDA regulates most of the nation's food supply, except for meat, poultry and some egg products, which fall to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA already stamps refused goods. Before a country can export USDA-regulated products to the USA, the USDA determines that its food safety system is as good as the USA's. Only 33 countries can export meat or poultry to the USA. The FDA has no such requirement. About 150 countries, from Canada to Cambodia to China, export FDA-regulated goods to the USA.