The FDA plans to end its routine food security inspections, say sources

THE Food and Drug Administration Establishing plans that would end the major part of its routine food security inspection work, several health officials have been effectively outsourcing to the state and local authorities to CBS.

The plans have not been finalized and may need Congress measures to finance fully, said officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

“The statement that the FDA is suspected of routine food security inspections. The FDA is actively working to ensure the continuity of operations during the reorganization period and remains determined to guarantee that the programs and critical inspections are continuing,” said a spokesperson for the FDA in an FDA.

Some FDA employees have worked on a possible change in agency routine food efforts for years, said a current and a former official, which could release resources to focus on higher priorities and foreign inspections. The FDA already subcontracts certain routine food inspections thanks to contracts with 43 states and Puerto Rico.

“There is so much work to go around. And we duplicate their work simply does not make sense,” a former FDA official told CBS, who worked on the plans before leaving the agency and spoke under the cover of anonymity.

Several federal health officials have said that state labor is currently often reserved for lower risk inspections. A third of routine food security inspections have been carried out by the states in recent years, a government government report said this year.

The FDA is finally responsible for the security of a large part of the American food supply distributed on state lines, such as packaged products, seafood, eggs and products. Certain types of meat are regulated by another agency in the American department of agriculture.

Certain higher risk routine food inspections would probably remain at the FDA in plans, two officials said. For example, agency staff are currently carrying out annual visits to infants manufacturers, who are supervised separately in the form of “critical food” inspections. The states would not be able to take the work of routine inspections in foreign food installations.

We do not know what would happen for states that have no contracts with the FDA to perform food inspections, which go from Hawaii to Delaware.

In addition to routine inspections, the FDA also makes other types of inspections in response to problems, such as a visit to a colorado onion processor last year Line in the epidemic of McDonald’s Quarter Pounders which revealed dozens of violations.

Internal planning around the possibility of outsourcing its routine inspections resumed after 2010, said the former FDA official, when the agency worked on the implementation of major food security legislation adopted that year.

The manager compared the plans to the FDA’s milk safety program of the FDA, where the statements finance the majority of the surveillance work themselves and have agreements with the agency to normalize the way the industry is regulated.

Certain plea states and groups have called for years to the FDA to move its routine food inspections to the states. States can often perform inspections at a cost lower than the FDA, while meeting the same standards, they argued.

“FDA audits have determined that states inspections were of high quality, and costs show that they are good economic value. There is also a significant cost to manage two systems,” said Steve Mandenach, executive director of the association of Food and Drug Horse, in a press release.

Manernach has drawn a parallel with the centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in which hospitals and nursing homes are largely inspected by state agencies but supervised by the federal government.

He also pointed out how the FDA regulates farms. The FDA has agreements with most states to pay the routine inspections carried out by local agriculture services, where they often manage inspections and application themselves.

“In addition, we have already implemented this type of program with products and it has succeeded, the widening and expression of these lessons cannot bring greater value to taxpayers, increase manufacturer’s monitoring and improve food security,” he said.

Ending the FDA work to do its own routine food security inspections could also help to mitigate a problem elsewhere at the agency: an inspection backwards abroad, as well as in other markets such as medical products.

In the past, FDA inspectors had been trained to perform several types of inspections, officials said, instead of specializing in food security inspections.

Strong layoffs of office support staff should cut out The number of inspections which can be carried out by the agency, previously reported CBS News. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary Also has green light plans to hire entrepreneurs to try to plug the hole left by the dismissed workers.

“In theory, relying on states to do more routine food inspection work could lead to better food security,” said Thomas Gremillion, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, in an email at CBS News.

Gremillion warned that a transition in the way food inspections are carried out by the FDA would take a lot of time and resources.

“Until now, this administration has acted with reckless contempt on how its policies will affect the detection and prevention of foods of food origin, and everything plans to replace federal food inspectors with another workforce deserves suspicion,” he said.