Food fright

THE CHRONIC underfunding of the food inspection arm of the US Food and Drug Administration became a national scandal this spring after pet food ingredients from China killed or sickened thousands of US cats and dogs. Consumers of human food now realize they may face similar dangers, while the pet food companies have suffered devastating sales losses because of the government's failure to regulate food imports rigorously.

The FDA, which is responsible for regulating all food except the meat and poultry examined by the US Department of Agriculture, inspects less than 1 percent of food import shipments, though the rate is about 2 percent for countries like China that have a checkered record, according to William Hubbard, a former associate commissioner for the FDA. China's record has come under more intense scrutiny recently for three reasons: the discovery of the industrial chemical melamine in the pet food; China's bid to have its cooked chickens accepted by the United States; and the jump in agricultural imports from China from just $1 billion worth in 2002 to almost $2.3 billion in 2006.

Just how common problems are with foodstuffs from China became clear in a Washington Post article last week based on FDA documents. They showed that during April alone the agency held up 107 food imports from China, including dried apples preserved with a carcinogenic chemical, frozen catfish with banned antibiotics, scallops and sardines laden with bacteria, and mushrooms containing illegal pesticides. Despite such contamination, US companies continue to buy Chinese foodstuffs because they are cheaper.

Hubbard, who advocates doubling the FDA's corps of food inspectors, said in an interview that food inspection has suffered from the same pattern of underfunding as the agency's safety surveillance for prescription drugs after they are approved for use. Inspection of domestic food operations is also inadequate, he said, pointing to last year's loss of much of the spinach crop because shipments from California were contaminated by bacteria. Domestic food producers often go 15 to 20 years between inspections.

At the borders, just 450 FDA inspectors do checks on the annual 13 million imported food shipments each year. "It's basically an honor system," Hubbard said. The risk is especially great from a country like China that does not rigorously inspect its own producers, one reason that the US Department of Agriculture should think twice or three times before allowing imports of Chinese cooked chickens. Hubbard pointed out that the USDA has 8,000 inspectors for the 20 percent of the food economy it supervises, while FDA has just 1,700 for the other 80 percent. The agency needs far more if it is to keep human consumers in the United States from suffering the fate of so many cats and dogs.