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.

A decade ago, the FDA supported legislation to give it more power to deny foods from countries lacking good food safety systems. The legislation died in Congress.

Lawmakers have recently introduced at least eight bills that require or suggest that countries or companies have food safety standards equivalent to the USA's before they can export to the USA.

•Port restrictions. In 1993, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., wrote a lengthy memo to his colleagues outlining weaknesses in the FDA's oversight of imports.

He described how some importers brought goods into the USA via ports where FDA inspection resources were weak. FDA inspectors staff about 90 of the nation's more than 300 ports of entry.

Port shoppers are still active. Investigators for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce testified in July at a food safety hearing that unscrupulous seafood importers were directing questionable products by air to Las Vegas to avoid experienced FDA seafood reviewers at West Coast seaports.

Dingell, chairman of the powerful House Committee on Energy and Commerce, introduced a bill in September that proposed broad changes in how the FDA oversees imports. One controversial proposal in the bill would restrict food imports to just a dozen ports unless the FDA deems the import of little risk. Industry has already lined up against it, saying it would cripple the flow of imports.

Dingell says big changes are needed. "We've been having hearings on this for years," he says. "Do you want to keep getting bad food?"

•Better analysis. In November, the FDA is expected to reveal details of a new "Food Protection Plan" to improve oversight of imported and domestic food. The Bush administration's team, which is examining the safety of all imported products, is set to do the same with imported food. Both efforts center on finding ways to prevent problems and better identify high-risk foods or companies and rely less on the tough job of catching problems.

Because the FDA cannot easily inspect foreign manufacturing plants, it relies heavily on inspections at U.S. ports of entry. Yet, while food imports have soared about 50% in the past five years, the number of FDA food-import inspectors has fallen about 20%. The FDA inspects just 1% of food imports.

The FDA already targets inspections to higher-risk foods and to manufacturers or countries that have produced bad products before.

But critics, including former FDA employees, say the FDA doesn't adequately assess the risk of certain food imports. The FDA in 2003 finished an "Import Strategic Plan" that included hundreds of ideas to shore up that ability, often using computer databases to gather and analyze data, says Benjamin England, a former FDA attorney who worked on the plan with dozens of others.

For example, the plan envisioned the FDA deciding what goods to inspect by drawing information from many sources, including other federal agencies that inspect foreign food suppliers, such as the Department of Defense, companies that audit foreign plants and databases that track global events, such as chemical spills that might affect food-production conditions.

But the Import Strategic Plan went nowhere. Instead, it languished as the FDA scrambled to successfully implement most food-related parts of the Bioterrorism Act, crafted after 9/11 to, in part, boost defenses against terrorist attacks.

"We had to devote everything to the Bioterrorism Act … and a lot of things pending at that time got shelved," says Lester Crawford, former FDA commissioner. He left the FDA in 2005 when drug safety, not food safety, was the hot topic. "There are no villains here, just competing priorities," he says.

For now, the FDA's computer systems for imports are so "old and outdated" that inspectors looking at a computer screen of incoming shipments "cannot even distinguish imports of road salt from table salt," former FDA official Hubbard told a congressional committee last month. Parts of the Import Strategic Plan are expected to be in the FDA's new plan, the agency says.

Back in the spotlight

The focus on food imports reignited in March when tainted pet-food ingredients from China sickened dogs and cats nationwide. Then, U.S. consumers were hit with recalls and warnings regarding China-made toothpaste tainted with antifreeze, toys containing lead and fish fed potentially harmful antibiotics.

Since spring, the FDA has restricted imports of some pet-food ingredients and some farm-raised fish from China. Lawmakers have held at least six hearings on food safety (another is set for Thursday) and introduced a dozen bills at least touching on regulation of imported foods. That's about four times as many as in previous congressional sessions.

The bills include proposals ranging from a complete revamp of the nation's food safety system and creation of a single food safety agency — 15 share responsibilities now — to Dingell's port restrictions and calls for importers to pay fees to fund FDA inspections.

Several high-powered groups have also formed to push for greater FDA funding and have influential supporters, including former HHS secretary Thompson and industry groups representing companies as varied as biotech-drug makers and grocers.

The food industry has ideas, too. The Grocery Manufacturers Association last month proposed, among other things, that U.S importers certify the safety of their foreign suppliers and that the FDA check up on importers. The National Fisheries Institute has also called for the FDA to certify importers.

But how quickly new laws or proposals take hold — or how effective they'll be — is another matter.

The idea of marking goods that FDA inspectors rejected surfaced at least as far back as 1991. When the FDA followed with its proposal in 2001, it said the marks should go on goods refused for safety reasons. The Bioterrorism Act, however, said they should be put on goods refused for any reasons. That could include issues from filth to lack of English labels.

The industry has already indicated its displeasure. In a 2003 citizens petition to the FDA, food associations argued that the marks could infringe on free speech rights because importers would be forced to make a "derogatory statement" about their products. They also said the "bold and blanket" mark might reduce the importers' ability to sell goods "even in countries where the product may be lawfully marketed."

Importers had also proposed that the marks be in invisible ink detectible only to U.S. regulators.

Randall Lutter, the FDA's deputy commissioner for policy, says the agency still intends to pursue the marking proposal. He gave no specific time frame.

But given the recent problems with imports from China, Dingell says substantive changes to food safety oversight are likely this time around.

"There's a greater sense of urgency," agrees Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who says both political parties are now focused on the issue, while in the past, "The Republican Congress hasn't cared much about the FDA."

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., long active on food safety issues, has also noticed a change, he said at a recent food safety conference. "It used to be that when I talked about food safety, a lot of reporters' eyes would glaze over. They thought it was just some boring 'process' about the bureaucracy," he said.

"Not anymore. Now when I talk about fixing America's broken food safety system … people listen."