It is past time for Congress and the Administration to step in and solve the FDA organizational problems that seems to elude the FDA bureaucracy.
Safe food should not be a political issue.
Perhaps, because after 30 years in the food poison trenches, I had a good idea what was going to happen (or not), or perhaps I too got the embargoed FDA Statement on “FDA Proposes Redesign of Human Foods Program to Enhance Coordinated Prevention and Response Activities.”
Embargoed FDA statements, like confidential Presidential documents, seem to be everyplace all at once.
Sources aside, Drs. Califf’s and Woodcock’s “plan” announced this morning is nothing more than a well-crafted (embargoed to increase the feeling of exclusivity) press release that rearranges the deck chairs on the USS FDA – food safety iceberg be damned.
The FDA essentially ignored the people selected by the Reagan-Udall Foundation to give the FDA suggestions on how to fix both the structure of the food side of the FDA and to move towards a more proactive culture of food safety writ large. Here is the present FDA Organization Chart (highlights by me of the Centers that need to be unified under either an empowered Deputy Commissioner for Foods or a separate Commissioner of Foods who reports to the HHS Secretary).
Xavier, Hakeem, Kevin, Mitch, Chuck and Joe, do you know that 48,000,000 of us get poisoned yearly by the “safest food supply in the world”? And, that is just bacteria and viruses. If you consider the food with too much salt, sugar and fat, that the FDA also does an inadequate job of regulating, millions of all of us become ill and die needlessly from this “safe food.”
Xavier, Hakeem, Kevin, Mitch, Chuck and Joe, before yet another food crisis like infant formula or E. coli-tainted romaine happens again – DO SOMETHING!
Xavier, Hakeem, Kevin, Mitch, Chuck and Joe, read the Reagan-Udall report. Hold hearings. Ask hard questions. Seek input from consumers and food processors on how best to organize the FDA to meet its Mission Statement: “The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for protecting the public health … by ensuring the safety of our nation’s food supply, … .”
This can be done. Government can work. Please step up and be the leaders that we need.