Obama's FY 2015 Budget Proposes New CPSC and FDA User Fees on Imports
The Obama administration’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget request includes new user fees for the import-related activities of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Food and Drug Administration. The president’s budget, issued on March 4 (see 14030418), proposes a new import surveillance user fee that CPSC would begin collecting in FY 2016 to offset the costs of expanding its import surveillance program nation-wide. The proposal also includes new user fees FDA will use to support its import program and implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act.
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Proposed CPSC Import Surveillance User Fees
Under President Obama’s requested budget for CPSC (here), the agency would begin “scaling the CPSC’s import surveillance initiative to a full-scale national program in FY 2015.” The budget request “proposes that an import surveillance user fee be enacted in FY 2015 with collections beginning by FY 2016 to offset costs of the program.”
In remarks at an industry conference in Seattle in September (here), outgoing CPSC chairwoman Inez Tenenbaum said the user fees would be used to expand CPSC’s Risk Assessment Methodology pilot to ports nation-wide. “The RAM pilot was aimed at early detection and targeting of high risk products and repeat offenders,” she said. “We want to achieve the full potential of this program, which would mean electronically analyzing 100 percent of incoming import line entries in our jurisdiction designated as high priority,” she said. The user fees “could offset the cost of the proposed program of work.”
New FDA User Fees on Imports, Facility Registration and Inspection
Obama’s FY 2015 budget request for FDA also includes a number of new user fees (here). “Legislation will be proposed to allow FDA to collect fees for food import and food facility registration and inspection to implement the requirements of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA),” says the budget. “The additional resources, estimated at $169 million for the food import program, would support FDA's food safety efforts to modernize the import system,” it said.
User fees are also being proposed on food facility registration and inspection. The fees, estimated at $60 million, “would enable FDA to target new and improved activities required by FSMA to modernize the food safety system and support improvements in safety science and risk analysis to prevent food safety outbreaks,” says the budget.