Pet Deaths Spur Call for Better FDA Screening

When reached by phone, seven wheat gluten companies advertising on Alibaba declined to answer specific questions about where their products come from.

That kind of opacity poses enormous challenges to pet food makers, said Rodney Noel, a state chemist in Indiana and a member of the pet food committee of the Association of American Feed Control. "How can these companies know the source?" Noel asked. "They don't necessarily know if it came from China or Timbuktu."

It also poses problems for the FDA, which has limited authority to demand records identifying the sources of food.

But that is just one of many ways in which the agency is hobbled, experts said. Another: Despite a temporary post-Sept. 11, 2001, staff increase inspired by fears of terrorist attacks on food, the number of FDA employees working on port inspections has returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels -- part of a gradual shriveling of the agency's food safety division relative to its burgeoning pharmaceutical branch.

Moreover, while the Agriculture Department -- which has parallel responsibilities for imported beef and poultry -- has the legal authority to designate 10 U.S. ports as the only ones eligible to accept foreign meat, allowing its inspectors to focus their efforts in those places, FDA inspectors -- who are far fewer in number -- must cover every U.S. border crossing.

Inspectors would also benefit from portable high-speed analyzers. Most samples today are sent overnight to distant labs. And because officials can sideline only those shipments they deem suspicious, imported foodstuffs are typically well into the chain of commerce by the time test results come back.

That problem is exacerbated by FDA's lack of authority to order recalls, which means it must rely on the cooperation of companies when products need to be pulled off shelves. And that assumes the agency has managed to detect a contaminant, which is not easy.

"There is this popular assumption -- maybe it comes from people watching 'CSI' -- that you can put a sample in a machine and get all the answers," said Michels, the consultant. "Unfortunately, it's not like that." You have to have some idea of what you might be looking for."

Congress has a variety of avenues open to it as it considers how to strengthen the beleaguered agency. One is to make permanent some provisions of the Bioterrorism Act of 2002. In response to the pet food crisis, the FDA invoked the act recently for the first time -- not because of any suspicion that bioterrorism was at play but because of the added powers it provides to obtain shipping records and detain shipments.

Some advocates want an expansion of the so-called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) program that USDA uses to prevent microbial contamination of meat and poultry, and which the FDA recently adopted for imported seafood. The program makes companies legally liable for identifying where contamination is likely to occur and instituting suitable controls at those points.

"As long as the system depends on government inspectors to detect problems and pull dangerous foods, it's a failed system," said Michael Taylor, former director of the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service and a former FDA deputy commissioner. HACCP, Taylor said, "allows us to hold companies accountable."

Discussion of enhancements could start this week, as Congress begins to debate reauthorizing the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, a controversial program that aims to speed drug approvals with injections of pharmaceutical company money.

"We need to take FDA from being a toothless agency to one with the authority to act to protect the public health," DeLauro said.

That effort could still stall, but it is riding a wave it never thought it would catch: a wellspring of concern for the nation's dogs and cats.

Staff writer Nancy Trejos and researcher Crissie Ding contributed to this report. Cha and Ding reported from China.