Appropriations Asking Why Food Inspections, Import Sampling Declined Before COVID-19
House Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., is questioning whether FDA's Office of Regulatory Affairs is using its funding effectively and fulfilling its duty of preventing the spread of food-borne illnesses. A May 13 letter notes that in fiscal year 2019, ORA's food funding was $732 million, about the same as the previous fiscal year, but visual exams of imported food products declined 25%, domestic inspections decreased 18% and the sampling of imported products fell 21%.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
"During FY2019, Congress funded 2,179 food full-time equivalent (FTE) positions for ORA, but ORA allocated only 785 positions for food safety compliance and inspection staff. At the end of the 2019 calendar year, over 100 -- over 13 percent -- of these positions were vacant," DeLauro and Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., wrote. So, they asked FDA to answer a number of questions, including: "What accounts for the significant declines from FY 2018 to FY 2019 in the number of domestic inspections, import exams and import analyses performed by ORA? What accounts for the vacancies in ORA food inspection and compliance positions?"