Panel examines FDA challenges on eve of nominations

Illustrating one of the many challenges the new leaders of the FDA will face, House members on Wednesday examined the difficulties in overseeing food safety just before news broke that President Obama was nominating former New York Health Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to lead FDA and Baltimore Health Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein to be her deputy director.

The House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee's hearing of ways to reform the food safety system, including granting FDA authority to issue mandatory product recalls, comes in the wake of one of the largest food recalls in history, following a lethal salmonella outbreak in the peanut industry that killed nine people.

"It is shameful that FDA does not have authority to mandate recalls," said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., who added that FDA needs a predictable revenue stream and updated oversight powers.

Lawmakers and panelists did not shun the idea of stripping food oversight from the FDA and forming a new food safety system. Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., has introduced legislation to split the food safety functions of the FDA into a separate division of HHS, establish a food safety commissioner and update food safety laws.

But Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said reorganizing federal bureaucracies would take too much time, and quickly solving the problems of the current system should take precedence. "After we finish that job, we can consider whether a reorganization is necessary, and if so, how to go about it," Waxman said.

Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said his panel's next hearing would explore which legislation it would try to move through Congress. He said the subcommittee is still awaiting recommendations from the new FDA commissioner. "It is our intention to move fairly quickly," he said.