FDA details Food Safety Companion

New York November 30: United States Food and Drug Administration has released details about its Food Safety Companion. FDA is now in the process to carefully look in to the matter of nation’s food safety and step ahead to convince people of their credibility after being criticized for not taking appropriate measures against import of unsafe food.

FDA will release a report, which tells the objectives behind Food Safety Companion. The major objective behind this companion is to find through its Food Inspection department the appropriate food safety measures.

Dr. David Acheson, the agency’s associate commissioner for foods said, “The goal is to radically redesign the process”. The agency will start detecting the impurities in the products right from its production point . “We cannot simply rely on picking the ball up at the point of entry,” he said.

For inspections and collection of samples, FDA is hiring 130 employees and opening offices at different countries like Europe, India, Latin America and Middle East to improve the monitoring of food exported to the United States.

F.D.A. offices, which are being opened in several countries, will try to develop relations with foreign regulators and manufacturers. Agency is planning to put sophisticated screening program on the borders of the countries to identify harmful food products and ensure import of safe foods.

However, Dr. Acheson is doubtful of the plan because according to him, agency does not have enough funds to implement the plan and some cities have even expressed doubt about work and commitments of agency.

In November 2007, FDA had outlined a plan to incorporate these measures but Government Accountability Office did not pass it saying that the plan was not with the details of costs and strategies.

Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut said, “I’ve tried to be open about when they come in and say they are doing this and doing that, But at every step, they fail on just such a large scale.”

She further said, the example of agency’s mismanagement and dysfunction is ‘agency’s reaction over discovery of harmful chemical ‘melamine’ in infants formula. However, the agency had defended itself by saying that the level of melamine in those products was below the unsafe limit, thus was not harmful.

Ms. DeLauro did not buy FDA’s argument and said, “It’s got to be so totally redone. It needs resources; it needs better management; it needs less influence from the industry and more influence on the science.”

Food and Drug Administration of United States supervises 80 percent of the nation’s food supply and thousands of manufactures in the United States to regulate drug and medical devises.