Food and Drug Administration snubbed offer by USDA to help inspect plants

The Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service has tried to persuade FDA to mostly reduce a plan to use third-party food-safety inspectors, but got the cold shoulder when it offered to help FDA inspect risky food plants, according to a letter the agency sent FDA this month. Limited funding and manpower led FDA to request as part of the food protection plan it released in November that Congress grant it the ability to certify third-party inspectors to potentially increase inspections.

FSIS took exception to the idea of using third-party inspectors at the 17,000 plants FDA deemed high risk, according to the letter. The letter was written as part of ongoing talks the agencies have had since food-safety concerns have spiked in the last year, an FSIS spokeswoman said. FDA did not respond to requests for comment.

FSIS offered to work out an agreement with FDA to lend its partner in food regulation a hand. "FSIS suggested that reliance on FSIS inspection personnel would provide greater consumer confidence in the safety of the riskiest products than would reliance on an auditor paid by the plant," FSIS Administrator Alfred Almanza and others wrote.

Third-party inspections would be voluntary in lieu of FDA inspections, although FDA could decide to conduct its own inspections. FSIS believes a noncompliant company would not have an incentive to hire an inspection firm when it knows FDA may not get to its plant for years. "As you explained in our meetings, you lack the resources to provide such an incentive," FSIS officials wrote.

The letter suggests FDA was not warm to the idea, and asks FDA's food-safety czar William Acheson to reconsider.

"While this suggestion was not seemingly well received by FDA, I think it is in the best interest of both our respective agencies to continue exploring ways to harmonize our approaches to inspection of product that is widely recognized as being of greater risk for foodborne illness," FSIS officials wrote. William Hubbard, FDA's former associate commissioner for policy, said FDA may have resisted because of vast differences between the two agencies' inspection techniques.

"You've got a diametrically opposite system, not because these agencies think this is the right way to do it, but because this is the way Congress decided they should do it," Hubbard said.

FSIS is required to station inspectors at every meat plant every day to ensure animal health and industry compliance with safety standards. FDA is not stationed at each food plant, but when it does inspect, FDA's inspections are more rigorous and science based, Hubbard said.

Hubbard noted when he still was with the agency, third-party inspection talks usually set off alarms from other agencies that did not want to move that way.

"USDA may be worried if the third-party idea were to take hold, there may be demands that their inspections go to third parties," he said.