FDA Faulted for Lack of Produce Oversight

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In addition, the report said, the FDA has had to "delay issuing final fresh-cut produce guidance at least six years because it had to shift staff to counterterrorism" and investigating outbreaks of food-borne illness.

The report also noted that the FDA has proposed changes in its Food Protection Plan that would improve oversight of fresh produce, but the plan is still in its early stages and hasn't been implemented.

In a brief statement released Friday, the FDA said the agency "appreciates the Congressional investment in its efforts to implement the Food Protection Plan, which calls for two of the very same authorities recommended in this report. In addition, FDA will soon be awarding grants to states to further food and feed safety -- one of the many steps we are taking to transform food protection."

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Suresh Pillai, a professor of a microbiology specializing in food safety and environmental microbiology at Texas A&M University, said the issue of food safety has been "a problem that's been ongoing, and it's not only restricted to fresh produce. If you start digging deeper into ground beef and irradiated meat, you have the same issues. Additional resources could help, but even if you get an army of inspectors into a processing plant, the whole issue of microbial contamination of fresh produce is very complicated. There's a lot of science we still don't know."

Besides the challenges of basic scientific knowledge, experts describe a U.S. food-safety system that is fragmented, unwieldy and dauntingly complicated -- themes that were sounded last January in a three-part series on food safety published by HealthDay.

"There are multiple issues here," said Vernon Tesh, professor of microbial and molecular pathogenesis at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. "It's not just about produce coming in from foreign countries. It's the whole development of a nationwide distribution network."

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