Lawmakers Criticize FDA Lab Closure Plan
Tuesday, July 17, 2007; 6:58 PM
WASHINGTON -- Importers have learned to evade close federal scrutiny of the food they ship into the United States, putting consumers at increasing risk, congressional investigators said Tuesday.
Lawmakers also criticized the Food and Drug Administration's plan to close half of its laboratories. They called that idea misguided and questioned whether it would save money and enhance the agency's ability to target unsafe food, as FDA commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach said it would.
  William Hubbard, former Associate Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 17, 2007, before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on food safety. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke) (Lauren Victoria Burke - AP)  
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"FDA's ill-conceived decision to close seven of its 13 laboratories likely would expose American consumers to even more danger from unsafe foods, particularly imports," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., at a hearing of a House Committee on Energy and Commerce subcommittee.
Von Eschenbach said the lab plan was meant to modernize the FDA's food safety efforts.
The FDA's ability to police the nation's food supply has come under withering criticism from Congress and others amid a string of high-profile cases of foodborne illness, including E. coli-tainted spinach and salmonella-contaminated peanut butter and snack foods, as well as concerns about drug-laced, farmed fish imported from China.
An Energy and Commerce Committee investigation found the FDA now has little ability to police imports. In San Francisco, for example, the FDA's staff can conduct only a cursory review of imports, generally dedicating just 30 seconds to each shipment as it flashes by on a computer screen, according to investigators.
Even when products are flagged by the FDA, importers have learned to manipulate the system, investigators said. For example, the FDA relies on results obtained from private labs, but those labs produce results driven by financial rather than scientific concerns, investigators told the subcommittee.
Investigative counsel Kevin Barstow said he was told by an unnamed FDA deputy lab director that "none of the test results he's seen are completely accurate."
"The words he used were 'not good' and 'spooky,'" Barstow said.
Importers also can reduce the level of scrutiny by having their products test negative five consecutive times, according to the investigators. Since some large fish, including tuna, can be flagged for high mercury levels, importers will arrange to have five lots of smaller fish _ generally younger and with comparatively less mercury _ tested to obtain an all-clear from the FDA. Once the monitoring decreases, the importers can then resume bringing in larger fish that otherwise might not pass muster, the investigators said.
"You're saying the importers know how to maneuver around the FDA?" asked Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa.
"Yes," said committee senior investigator David Nelson.
