Two Very Different Paths From Farm to Table

Bifurcated Safety System Means Some Foods Get Less Scrutiny

Customers dining on surf and turf at a local restaurant may find themselves feasting on steak and a handful of breaded shrimp that took wildly disparate paths through a disjointed American food-safety system.

The steak came from a cow that was examined by a government inspector before and after it was slaughtered. The shrimp most likely were not inspected. The steak probably came from an American producer. The shrimp likely came from overseas, perhaps from one of several Asian countries that have been criticized for sloppy practices in raising seafood.

The disparity is a function of America's 100-year-old food-safety system, under which the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration divvy up the food pyramid. The USDA regulates meat, a practice that dates to 1906, after the Upton Sinclair novel "The Jungle" had alerted Americans to unsanitary conditions in the nation's slaughterhouses. The FDA oversees the safety of most other foods, including seafood, fruits and vegetables.

Neither agency's inspection system is perfect, but the one that covers beef is more likely to catch problems than the one covering seafood, according to consumer groups and people who have worked in food safety.

The split system has resulted in a patchwork process for ensuring that meat, seafood and produce consumed in the United States is safe. In a report this year, the Government Accountability Office called federal oversight of the food safety system "fragmented" and put it on a list of "high-risk" programs.

Reports of unsafe food from China have spurred a reexamination of the system, which some say has not caught up with recent increases in food imports, which have doubled in value in the past decade. "Our overall food-safety system needs comprehensive reform. People are losing confidence," said Rep. Rosa DaLauro (D-Conn.), a frequent critic of the FDA's oversight of seafood and produce.

But FDA Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach, in a letter to employees last month after the agency was criticized during a congressional hearing, said, "Although food safety problems still occur in this country, it does not automatically follow that the FDA is asleep at the switch."

Changing the system would require upending huge bureaucracies and long-standing traditions, as well as tackling industry concerns. Congress is considering a piece of legislation that would establish a single food-safety agency and another that would, for the first time, allow the FDA to charge importers a fee.

An import safety panel appointed by President Bush is expected to issue recommendations in September, and the subject has come up in high-level talks between the United States and China.

"There is something in between FDA and USDA that is really the right answer," said Mike Taylor, a former administrator for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service and a research professor of public health at George Washington University. "We have to make it a system that enforces private industry's responsibility to manage supply chain."

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) has advocated a single food agency as a way to create efficiency. "It could be that USDA is not the best model. Let science dictate that decision, not tradition or politics," Durbin said.

The USDA system relies on an army of 7,600 inspectors who do a what the agency calls a "carcass-by-carcass" inspection at slaughterhouses throughout the country. The agency also limits imports of meat -- beef, chicken, lamb and pork -- to 37 countries that have comparable food safety systems and are certified by the agency. Of the imported meat, about 10 percent is subject to further testing when it reaches U.S. shores, according to the USDA.