Improvements Sought To Protect U.S. Food Supply

A RiskWorld news brief by Mary Bryant, staff editor
E-mail to: bryant@tec-com.com

Outdated food safety laws and a fragmented federal structure serve as barriers to improving protection of the nation's food supply from contamination or other hazards, according to a new congressionally mandated report from a committee of the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.

Titled Ensuring Safe Food from Production to Consumption, the report says federal officials should adopt a science-based approach that helps them prevent, identify, and target the largest threats. Arcane safety laws must be repealed, and one individual should be appointed to provide a single point of leadership to implement a comprehensive plan that pulls together efforts currently spread across at least 12 federal agencies.

To reduce some 9,000 deaths and 81 million illnesses each year that have been attributed to consumption of contaminated food in the United States, the report recommends that:

(1) The food safety system should be based on science.

(2) Congress should establish a unified, central framework for managing food safety programs, headed by one official with control of resources for all federal food safety activities.

(3) Congress should change federal statutes so that inspection, research, and enforcement are based on scientifically supportable assessments of risk.

(4) A comprehensive national food safety plan should be developed.

Dr. John C. Bailar III of the department of health studies at the University of Chicago chaired the committee that produced the report. The committee was formed by the Institute of Medicine, a private, non-profit organization that provides health policy advice under a congressional charter granted to the National Academy of Sciences, and by the National Research Council, the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. The U.S. Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Research Service sponsored the study.

Links to the Institute of Medicine’s full news release about this report, an HTML version of the report’s executive summary, a GIF image version of the full report, and ordering information for printed copies of the report are available on the Internet at http://www2.nas.edu/iom/2136.html.

Printed copies of the report can be obtained from the National Academy Press by calling telephone (202) 334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242. The cost of the report is $29.95 (prepaid) plus shipping charges of $4.00 for the first copy and $.50 for each additional copy.

Posted September 2, 1998.

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