 991244 U.S. Still Mulling Single Food Safety AgencyDecember 17, 1999 Washington - Top Clinton Administration officials will hold a public meeting next month to consider the creation of a single food safety agency to regulate meat, poultry, seafood, fruits, vegetables and other foods. The President's Council on Food Safety is gathering suggestions to prepare a broad strategy to make the nation's food supply safer from the farm to the family dinner table. Consumer activists, food companies, scientists, farm groups, academic experts, state health officials and other interested parties were invited to the panel's Jan. 19 meeting in Washington. Consumer groups and several Democratic lawmakers have urged the administration to take the dramatic step of creating a new agency dedicated to food safety from a jumble of regulatory units scattered across the USDA, FDA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Commerce Department, the Centers for Disease Control and a half-dozen other federal entities. The food industry opposes a single agency as costly and unnecessary. Among the items to be discussed at the meeting is “whether organizational or other changes would strengthen the current food safety system,” the council said in a statement. Members of the council include Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Jane Henney and White House Director of Science and Technology Policy Neal Lane. “Organizational changes under review include strengthening coordination and leadership, streamlining and/or consolidating specific federal food safety functions, consolidating responsibilities and the structure of current agencies, and establishing a new, stand-alone consolidated food safety agency,” the council said. Glickman and Shalala said last summer that launching a single food safety agency might be disruptive and get in the way of ongoing efforts to protect consumers from dangerous foodborne bacteria. The presidential panel is also looking at what kinds of additional research is needed, how to improve the safety of imported food, better inspection for pesticides and chemical contaminants, and ways to speed up regulatory approval of new technologies to destroy foodborne illness. Part of the food safety plan may also include developing incentives -- such as preferential sales to the vast federal school lunch program -- for companies that improve their food safety procedures, it said. The council said it would issue its draft strategy on Jan. 7, and finalize the plan later in the year based on suggestions at the public meeting.
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