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Food Safety and Inspection
Service United States Department of Agriculture Washington, D.C. 20250-3700 |
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Food Safety and Inspection
Service United States Department of Agriculture Washington, D.C. 20250-3700 |
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear at today's hearing and discuss our nation's food safety system and structure. I am Dr. Elsa Murano, Under Secretary for Food Safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As you know, I am a newcomer to USDA, having just been confirmed as Under Secretary on September 26. I am honored to be serving in this important position and am committed to the hard work ahead. I know there are many important food safety issues before the Congress, and I look forward to working closely with you to make progress on those issues.
Let me take a moment to discuss my background. I am a native of Havana, Cuba and immigrated with my family to the United States as a small child. I earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Florida International University, a Master of Science degree in anaerobic microbiology from Virginia Tech, and a Ph.D., in Food Science, also from Virginia Tech. I have been a researcher and teacher in the field of food safety, both at Iowa State and Texas A&M Universities. My research efforts have led me to investigate pathogens such as E. coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, and Salmonella. My approach in this work has been to investigate safe methods to control or eliminate them from the farm-to-table chain. I believe my experience as a scientist and educator, and my perspectives as an "outsider looking in" will be valuable as I begin this new position.
I believe it is critical to first understand the circumstances under which our current food safety system came into being. It is also valuable to consider the food safety responsibilities that USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is statutorily required to carry out.
FSIS' mission is to ensure that the Nation's commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled and packaged, as required by the Agency's authorizing statutes. FSIS' goal is to protect the public health by significantly reducing the prevalence of foodborne hazards in meat, poultry, and egg products. The FSIS Strategic Plan for 2000-2005 calls for a further 25 percent reduction in the number of foodborne illnesses resulting from consumption of products the Agency regulates. Although existing public health data make it difficult to isolate specific contributions to achieving an overall reduction in foodborne illness, we can and do take action to monitor and control the prevalence of the foodborne hazards that can cause illness.
FSIS has a long, proud history of protecting the public health. Although the Agency under the current name was established by the Secretary of Agriculture on June 17, 1981, its history dates back to 1906.
In 1890, the U.S. passed a meat inspection law to assure European markets that meat from the United States was safe. However, the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 signaled the real beginning of domestic inspection in the United States. A year earlier, Upton Sinclair published his book, The Jungle, portraying unsanitary conditions in Chicago slaughterhouses. The book caused a public and political outcry. Meat sales around the country dropped nearly a third. The 1906 Act began a system of continuous daily inspection in slaughterhouses using organoleptic (sight, smell, touch) inspection to detect unsanitary conditions and adulterated products. Poultry inspection began in 1926, on a voluntary basis, and in 1957, Congress passed the Poultry Products Inspection Act, which established mandatory, daily, continuous inspection of poultry products. The 1967 Wholesome Meat Act and the 1968 Wholesome Poultry Products Act brought imported meat and State inspection programs under the Federal system and require foreign and State inspection programs to be "equivalent" or "at least equal to" the Federal inspection program.
Since the 1967 and 1968 amendments, the next dramatic change to meat and poultry inspection occurred when FSIS published the landmark Pathogen Reduction/Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) Systems rule on July 25, 1996. The rule addresses the original organoleptic inspection system's limitations in dealing with the problem of pathogenic microorganisms (harmful bacteria) on meat and poultry products. The rule clarifies the respective roles of government and industry in food safety, and therein makes better use of government resources in addressing food safety risks. Industry is accountable for producing safe food. Government is responsible for setting appropriate food safety standards, maintaining vigorous inspection to ensure those standards are met, and maintaining a strong enforcement program to deal with plants that do not meet regulatory standards.
With the shift in recent years toward greater mass production and distribution of food, and greater globalization in food trade, the identification and tracking of potential food hazards has become a much more complex activity. In response, FSIS has developed strong partnerships with Federal, state, local, and foreign public health agencies and stakeholders to better coordinate the investigation of and response to food safety hazards and outbreaks of foodborne illness. These partnerships are vital to FSIS' ability to effectively perform its public health mission.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that Federal agencies with food safety responsibilities must be prepared to meet current and future food safety challenges. Our food safety system is being challenged by many factors. They include emerging pathogens, an increase in international trade, new food products in the marketplace, a growing segment of the population at greater risk of contracting foodborne illness, and gaps in education all along the farm-to-table chain.
On September 19th, the Bush Administration published its review of the food
and agricultural system with a view toward identifying critical needs for the
next century. The report, titled, Food and Agricultural Policy--Taking Stock
for the New Century, details the enormous changes that have taken place in
food and agriculture. It is a strategic planning tool that will help us frame
the debate for food and farm policy for the future.
Food safety certainly is a vital part of food and farm policy, and the report
emphasizes this. I'd like to provide more detail today about two key areas--the
food safety infrastructure and the importance of integrated food safety
programs.
Let me begin with the food safety infrastructure. U.S. agriculture is hugely successful at delivering abundant, affordable, safe and nutritious food. The pillar of success is largely due to an extensive physical and institutional infrastructure.
Inspection of meat, poultry and egg products is an important part of that infrastructure. FSIS currently has approximately 10,000 employees, the bulk of which are stationed in the field. More than 7,600 inspection personnel are stationed in approximately 6,000 meat, poultry, and egg plants and are responsible for the inspection of more than 8.5 billion birds, 133 million head of livestock, and 3.5 billion pounds of liquid egg products annually. In FY 2000, FSIS facilitated the export of an estimated 10 billion pounds of meat and poultry to approximately 100 countries throughout the world and began work on a new system to automate the certification of meat and poultry exports. Agency personnel also reinspected 3.7 billion pounds of imported meat and poultry from 31 countries. Eight million pounds of egg products were imported.
To ensure the safety of imported products, FSIS maintains a comprehensive system of import inspection, linking all U.S. ports of entry through a central computer system. This allows FSIS to establish compliance histories for countries and plants exporting to the U.S. and to communicate instantly among ports when problems are found at any individual port of entry. This system is one part of FSIS' efforts to verify the effectiveness of foreign inspection systems and to support its sister agency, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) in preventing the entry of meat or poultry products that present an animal disease threat to U.S. livestock.
In light of recent events in Europe regarding BSE, dioxin and other food safety crises, the manner in which FSIS certifies foreign programs as possessing public health safeguards that are "equivalent" to the U.S. program is a subject of heightened interest. Annually, FSIS reviews all foreign inspection systems in countries eligible to export meat and poultry to the U.S. In FY 2000, FSIS reviewed the documentation of and performed on-site audits in 31 countries exporting meat and poultry products to the United States and was satisfied that each country had implemented systems equivalent to U.S. Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures (SSOPs), HACCP systems, and Salmonella testing programs, required for domestic plants.
FSIS is also responsible for assessing State inspection programs that regulate meat and poultry products that may be sold only within the State in which they were produced. If a State chooses to end its inspection program or cannot maintain the "at least equal to" standard in the inspection law, then FSIS assumes responsibility for inspection. There are currently 27 states that have a State meat or poultry inspection program and operate under cooperative agreements with FSIS. In these States, Federal funding is provided for up to one-half of the State's cooperative inspection program as long as the State maintains a program "at least equal to" the Federal program.
Another part of the FSIS food safety program involves its three multi-disciplinary laboratories, which conduct laboratory testing for microbiological contamination, chemical and animal drug residues, pathological conditions, processed product composition, and economic adulteration. FSIS performed tests on more than 371,000 product samples in FY 2000.
FSIS also conducts compliance and enforcement activities to address situations where unsafe, unwholesome, or inaccurately labeled products have been produced or shipped. The objective of these activities is two-fold -- one, to make a critical appraisal of compliance with meat and poultry regulations, and two, as a result of certain critical appraisals, to take enforcement action where necessary. In FY 2000, more than 49,000 compliance reviews were conducted. As a result of these reviews and other activities, approximately 34 million pounds of meat, poultry, and egg products were detained for noncompliance with the respective laws, and many criminal convictions and injunctions were obtained against firms and individuals for violations of the meat and poultry inspection laws. In addition, industry voluntarily recalled more than 5 million pounds of meat, poultry, and egg products.
Surveillance is another part of the infrastructure. A strong food safety system must have a mechanism for identifying new food safety problems rapidly. USDA conducts surveillance of the food supply, and HHS' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in partnership with State and local health departments, conducts surveillance for human foodborne illness. In July 1995, HHS and USDA began a collaborative project in several sites to collect more precise information on foodborne illnesses. FoodNet is an active surveillance system that helps us to better quantify the incidence of foodborne illness, better identify the causes of those illnesses, and help document the effectiveness of new food safety control measures.
Outbreak response also is key. In the past, an outbreak most likely affected a small local population and involved locally prepared food products with limited distribution. Increasingly, outbreaks involve larger populations and are likely to be multi-state or even international. Delay in identifying the causative agent can allow the outbreak to spread. Because coordination is also essential, we have taken steps to expedite communication during large, multi-state outbreaks. One mechanism is the Foodborne Outbreak Response Coordinating Group (FORC-G)--a partnership established to better respond to interstate outbreaks of foodborne illness. USDA, HHS, and EPA form this partnership. This interagency group has coordinated and developed procedures for managing outbreaks, sharing information on potential sources of outbreaks and pathogens, and coordinating inter-departmental activities. A similar group, the Food Emergency Rapid Response and Evaluation Team--FERRET--has been established within USDA to coordinate the activities of USDA agencies.
USDA participates in PulseNet, a national network of public health laboratories supported by HHS. These laboratories aid outbreak response by performing DNA fingerprinting of foodborne bacteria and comparing results through an electronic database maintained by CDC. PulseNet permits rapid and accurate detection of foodborne illness outbreaks and traceback to their sources, including detection of a linkage among sporadic cases. PulseNet has been key in enabling Federal agencies to rapidly detect and control outbreaks of foodborne illness.
Research is another important part of the food safety infrastructure to better understand the basic science of food safety in order to design better diagnostic tools and interventions to improve food safety. FSIS is not a research agency, but works through the Agricultural Research Service to meet its research needs. FSIS' role is to articulate to ARS and to the private sector what its food safety research needs are in order to spur innovation and increase knowledge that can serve to reduce foodborne illness.
Risk assessment is another important part of the food safety infrastructure. Risk assessments are becoming increasingly important as a way of ensuring that our food safety resources are well spent. We can never completely eliminate foodborne health hazards, and resources are limited. Risk assessments help us to set priorities.
Education also figures prominently. Government needs to empower the public and private sector to take its proper responsibility for food safety. Education is necessary all along the farm-to-table chain, from producers on the farm to consumers in the home. Partnerships have been key in education. The "Fight BAC!" campaign is sponsored by the Partnership for Food Safety Education, a public-private partnership with participation of USDA, HHS, and the States. The campaign was created to reduce the incidence of foodborne illness by educating Americans about safe food handling practices. I believe there is much more we can do to educate food handlers, but this campaign is a good example of how a cooperative approach can work.
Like every infrastructure, the food safety system requires periodic review, ongoing reinforcement, and appropriate modernization just to keep pace with continuously emerging and often unique challenges. What has become very clear is that the services USDA provides, from eliminating foodborne pathogens, to protecting against plant and animal pests and diseases, to encouraging farm practices that stress conservation--all are interrelated and must continue to be carefully and comprehensively coordinated. For example, while animal health and food safety issues are housed in two separate USDA agencies, APHIS and FSIS work very closely together on issues of concern to both agencies. FSIS also coordinates closely with the Food and Nutrition Service and the Agricultural Marketing Service with regard to commodities purchased by AMS for the National School Lunch Program. The point of these examples is to illustrate the difficulty of isolating the food safety functions from USDA without affecting the integrity of the infrastructure as a whole.
This is true not only within USDA, but within government. As I described USDA's food safety infrastructure, I hope you noticed that every activity carried out by USDA has a partnership component. For example, outbreak response involves not only USDA but also HHS' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even inspection is carried out with the help of State inspection programs.
We can do more to examine whether Federal food safety agencies can improve the services they provide. But this should be done through a careful, step-by-step process. As a first step, I would like to have the chance to meet and work with my colleagues on key food safety issues. In recent years, Federal food safety agencies have made strides in working together, and this Administration is committed to building on these accomplishments.
While there are many challenges facing our food safety system, substantial progress has been made in recent years. I will continue to pursue enhancements in the safety of our food system by establishing a seamless, science-based process and by strengthening coordination with other agencies involved in the food safety system.
Mr. Chairman, thank you again for the opportunity to discuss our nation's food safety system and structure. I look forward to continuing the dialogue on this issue in the future and would be happy to answer any questions.
For Further Information Contact:
FSIS Congressional and Public Affairs Staff
Phone: (202) 720-3897
Fax: (202) 720-5704
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