FDA Faulted for Lack of Produce Oversight

For instance, fresh produce may arrive from South America or Central America to a centralized distribution center in the United States. Then box-car loads of the produce are transported around the country, Tesh explained.

"If the [food safety] system is going to work, it can't just be limited to monitoring what's coming in to the system," he said. "You have to follow the produce all the way to the point where the consumer purchases it, and that's a big undertaking. It doesn't really surprise me that the funds allocated to the FDA might not cover that field-to-table spectrum."

According to a report issued in April by the Trust for America's Health, about 85 percent of food-borne illness outbreaks occur among foods regulated by the FDA. Yet, the agency gets less than half of all federal funding for food safety. In the past three years, the FDA has cut back its food safety program by cutting its science staff by 20 percent and losing 600 food safety inspectors, the report said.

What's to be done?

"I see this as requiring a two-pronged attack," Tesh said. "The first is that you have to have better inspection. The other issue is what do you do after you find a problem. In addition to detecting a problem, you have to have a means of enforcing regulation."

More information

Learn more about the food safety system at foodsafety.gov.

SOURCES: Vernon Tesh, Ph.D., professor of microbial and molecular pathogenesis, Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine; Suresh Pillai, Ph.D., professor of microbiology, Texas A&M University; Sept. 26, 2008, statement, U.S. Food and Drug Administration