Oversight of Food Safety Activities: Federal Agencies Should Pursue Opportunities to Reduce Overlap and Better Leverage Resources

According to USDA, USDA/FSIS and DHHS/FDA have significantly increased the effectiveness of communications between the two agencies, heightened awareness of each other's responsibilities and operations, initiated more frequent and more effective cooperative efforts. The FSIA Performance Based Inspection System has been modified to include a field for indicating that an establishment is under dual jurisdiction. In addition, FSIS Directive 5730.1, "Responsibilities in Dual Jurisdiction Establishments (DJE)," was issued on June 28, 2005, to provide instruction to FSIS inspection program personnel about their roles and responsibilities with regard to inspection, verification, documentation of findings, and enforcement actions in DJE. FSIS and FDA have agreed to communicate at the District Office level about findings of hazardous, contaminated, or mislabeled foods and about processes that may result in contamination, recalls, or evidence of tampering in DJE. The directive outlines District Office responsibilities including specific findings that should be reported to FDA.

FDA and USDA's FSIS have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to facilitate the sharing of information between the agencies about establishments that are subject to the jurisdiction of both agencies. This exchange of information is to permit more efficient use of both agencies' resources and to contribute to improved public health protection. The primary application for this shared information is for enforcement collaboration when inspections find unsanitary conditions that cut across the regulatory authority of both agencies. FDA and FSIS coordinate these activities at the local level on a regular basis. FDA believes that this MOU has been productive and has been successful in enhancing collaborative activities to improve public health protection. For example, the sharing of information through this MOU led to a number of recalls of both FDA- and USDA-regulated products and has led to joint enforcement activities by the agencies. In addition, USDA and FDA have participated in a number of meetings and worked together to develop a web course, entitled, "Introduction to Food Security Awareness."

USDA and FDA have worked together to examine the feasibility of establishing a joint training program for food inspectors. While USDA agrees that there is merit in examining the feasibility of conducting joint training activities when workable commonalities can be found, it determined that it is not feasible to create one unified training program between FSIS and FDA that cover all food safety verification activities. However, FSIS and FDA have recently collaborated to provide a few joint training activities. Two retail meat and poultry processing teleconferences have been conducted, and the two agencies have developed, a retail meat and processing training curriculum.

HHS agrees that FDA and USDA should collaborate in developing training where both agencies can benefit. However, FDA has determined that that it is not feasible to create one unified training program between FSIS and FDA that cover all food safety verification activities. According to FDA, the two agencies enforce different laws and regulations using different procedures. Most of the foods regulated by the two agencies are different.

USDA shares information obtained during its foreign country equivalence determinations with other Federal agencies and makes available a wealth of information on the FSIS website including foreign audit reports, export requirements for U.S. producers, import requirements for foreign countries, the equivalence process, port-of-entry procedures, re-inspection procedures, and labeling requirements.

According to NOAA officials, the agency has implemented this recommendation.

In September 2009, EPA provided documentation that they had identified and inventoried all active interagency food safety-related agreements.

At the time of GAO's report, NOAA agreed with this recommendation to establish an inventory of active interagency food safety-related agreements where NOAA is a signatory. On May 26, 2006, the NOAA Seafood Inspection Program (SIP) completed an inventory of all active interagency food safety-related agreements in which it participates. NOAA had been updating its interagency agreement with FDA and in May 2009, cleared and sent a draft MOU to the FDA.

According to information received from Doris Tucker of FDA on December 2007, this activity is ongoing. FDA's joint public meeting to determine dual jurisdiction responsibilities is an example of this effort.

In September 2009, EPA provided documentation that they had evaluated the need for the agreements and, where necessary, updated the agreements. EPA provided a new list of active food safety-related interagency agreements.