FDA Could Be Cutting Back on Food Inspections, Prompting Public Health Worries and Oversight Concerns

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may soon scale back its routine food safety inspections, shifting even more responsibility to state authorities.

According to multiple federal health officials who spoke with CBS News, the FDA may soon further outsource the responsibility for food safety inspections to state authorities. This plan, shared by both a former and a current FDA official, has actually been a possibility for years under multiple administrations as a way to free up resources for higher-priority inspections. 

“There’s so much work to go around. And us duplicating their work just doesn’t make sense,” a former FDA official, who explained that they worked on the plans, told CBS.

It’s important to note that the FDA already outsources a significant portion of its inspection tasks to states, particularly those considered low-risk. The agency even clearly states on its website, “The FDA may conduct inspections using its own investigators or State partnering agencies acting on behalf of the FDA, or they may be conducted by foreign countries with whom we have Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) or similar agreements.” 

The FDA additionally explained that it “trains the state inspectors who conduct these inspections to ensure consistency in our inspectional approaches” and provides states with information and findings from its federal-level inspections to aid individual state work. It added, “Some states also conduct non-contract inspections, which supports the integrated food safety system. States provide the FDA with inspection data via this voluntary program.” 

The FDA, CBS reported, currently outsources some routine food inspections through contracts with 43 states and Puerto Rico. A January report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, under the Biden administration, indicated that approximately one-third of all inspections are already conducted at the state level. 

What remains unclear is what happens to the several states currently not under an FDA contract. However, advocacy groups, including the Consumer Brands Association and the Food Safety Coalition, have previously called for more state oversight. They expressed this in an open letter, “… States provide additional inspection capacity and often can do inspections at a lower cost. [The] FDA should leverage States that can perform FDA-audited equivalent inspections and expand the FDA workforce in those areas where states do not have the needed capacity.”

CBS also noted that Steve Mandernach, executive director of the Association of Food and Drug Officials, has stated in the past that “FDA audits have determined state inspections to be high quality, and the costs show them to be a good economic value. There is significant cost to managing two systems, also.” 

However, this news comes at a rather inopportune time for the FDA, which is facing criticism after NBC released its story on how the agency quietly buried a report on a November E. coli outbreak that killed at least one person. NBC obtained an internal report showing that the FDA would not be naming the companies responsible and that “There were no public communications related to this outbreak.” 

This move to protect the responsible parties rather than the public, Frank Yiannas, the former deputy commissioner of food policy and response at the FDA, told NBC, was alarming. “It is disturbing that the FDA hasn’t said anything more public or identified the name of a grower or processor,” Yiannas said. However, as NBC also noted, the agency is not required by law to reveal the details of the investigation. 

It has also been a difficult time at the FDA, following the steep layoffs of support staff. These layoffs have led the agency to announce that it will suspend quality control programs at food testing laboratories due to the staff reductions. 

“In theory, relying on states to do more routine food inspection work could lead to better food safety,” Thomas Gremillion, the director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, shared with CBS. However, Gremillion added, “So far, this administration has acted with reckless disregard for how its policies will affect the detection and prevention of foodborne illness, and any plans to replace federal food inspectors with some other workforce deserve suspicion.”