GAO: FDA’s inspection of seafood imports needs more work

GAO: FDA’s inspection of seafood imports needs more work    The U.S. government’s federal watchdog agency said in a report this week that the Food and Drug Administration’s inspection of seafood imports still needs further improvement.
   More than 80 percent of the seafood consumed by Americans is imported. The FDA is responsible for ensuring the public health and safety of those imports.
   The General Accounting Office faulted the FDA for not implementing its 2001 recommendations to improve seafood import oversight in the United States.
   Specifically, the GAO said the FDA failed to implement recommended “equivalence agreements” with seafood export countries. “Equivalence agreements that commit U.S. trading partners to maintain comparable food safety systems are an efficient way to ensure imported food seafood safety,” the GAO said.
   Unlike the FDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture certifies that countries exporting food products to the United States have equivalent food safety systems. The GAO said, “establishing these types of agreements would shift some of FDA’s burden for ensuring seafood safety to foreign governments” and “would allow FDA to focus its limited resources on seafood products from countries with less advanced food safety systems.”
   The GAO also criticized the FDA for failure to communicate serious product deficiencies found during inspections so that potentially contaminated seafood imports are examined before they enter the country.
   In addition, the GAO said the FDA continues to experience long delays between finding deficiencies and taking action. The GAO found in its review of foreign firm inspection records that it took about 348 days for FDA to alert staff at the ports of entry about serious safety problems identified at six overseas firms.
   The GAO said this problem stems from the FDA’s failure to prioritize its enforcement actions when violations occur, a problem compounded by the agency’s lack of systems to track the time involved in documenting, reviewing, and processing enforcement actions.
   The GAO recommended several specific actions that the FDA could take to improve its inspection of seafood imports. They include:
   * Commissioning seafood inspectors from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Seafood Inspection Program.
   * Using state regulatory laboratories and/or private laboratories to augment FDA’s testing of seafood imports.
   * Developing a program to use third-party inspectors to augment its program.
   The FDA acknowledged some of the problems identified in the GAO’s report, but emphasized its limited inspection resources and competing priorities, such as implementation of the 2002 Bioterrorism Act.