WASHINGTON — Despite calls from the incoming Obama administration to bolster the embattled Food and Drug Administration, the agency is unlikely to see major reform soon as bigger problems with higher profiles once again shoulder aside food safety in the competition for resources.
Some of the leading champions of rebuilding the FDA and the food safety system acknowledge that the faltering economy, healthcare, global warming and other issues will make it tough to allocate more money for food safety, despite years of scandals involving food poisoning and tainted imports.
"This is an issue that will have to wait its turn," said Assistant Senate Majority Leader Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime proponent of tougher food laws and a friend of President-elect Barack Obama.
Instead of assuming more direct control of the inspection system, the government seems likely to remain heavily dependent on growers, food processors and others in the industry to police themselves and the food supply.
Durbin and others on Capitol Hill nonetheless plan to push ahead with legislation to try to strengthen the FDA, the much maligned agency responsible for overseeing about 80% of the food Americans eat. (Most meat and dairy products are regulated by the Department of Agriculture; fresh produce and most processed foods are the responsibility of the FDA.)
Obama, who has backed Durbin's efforts and sponsored his own legislation to strengthen state and local food oversight, will continue to back them, according to an official working on his transition.
The federal government's food oversight was once seen as a model. But after years of neglect -- and Bush administration distaste for aggressive government regulation -- a series of deadly food-borne disease outbreaks involving peanut butter, spinach and peppers called public attention to holes in the FDA's capacity to stay on top of a rapidly expanding food market.
The agency struggled to identify the sources of contaminated foods, most recently this spring, when federal officials initially linked a salmonella outbreak to tomatoes before concluding that jalapeno peppers from Mexico were the likely culprit.
At the same time, contaminated pet food from China exposed weaknesses in the agency's system for regulating imports.
Consumer groups lambasted the agency for failing to protect the public. Food-borne illnesses sicken as many as 76 million people and kill an estimated 5,000 each year.
