Bush approves plan to tighten U.S. food safety rules

Peanut butter is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but chicken pot pies are the responsibility of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Frozen cheese pizzas are the FDA’s responsibility, but if there is pepperoni on them, USDA has jurisdiction, too. Critics of the nation’s food safety system say that it is too fragmented and marked by overlapping authority, and they say that may help explain why dangerous foods keep slipping through and why contamination scares are handled in sometimes inconsistent ways. AP’s Josh Funk quotes Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s food safety division, to say that “One of the underlying problems is the bifurcation of the regulatory system.” Critics also complain that the food safety system suffers from a shortage of money and inspectors and inadequate enforcement powers. In the months ahead, Congress will consider several proposals to reform the system, including creation of a single food safety agency, an idea both the FDA and USDA oppose. A top FDA official said the agencies cooperate well now. “We do not believe a single food safety agency would give us the efficiencies you can have from having two agencies responsible for 99 percent of the food that we eat in this country, both domestic and imported,” said Richard Raymond, USDA undersecretary for food safety. The government structure that protects the food supply took shape piecemeal over the past 101 years. The results could be seen in the way two recalls were handled over the past year.

When Peter Pan peanut butter was linked to a salmonella outbreak in February, ConAgra Foods recalled it as soon as federal health officials raised questions. When ConAgra’s Banquet-brand chicken and turkey pot pies were tied to a similar salmonella outbreak in October, however, the Omaha company waited two days to recall them, first issuing only a consumer health warning. Peanut butter is regulated by the FDA, while pot pies are regulated by the USDA, because USDA has long had authority over meat and poultry. Ready-to-eat foods like peanut butter, which is eaten right out of the jar, receive closer scrutiny because there is greater danger if harmful bacteria are present in those foods. Products like pot pies must be cooked first, and proper cooking kills most bacteria. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the pot pies sickened more than 270