New Report Advocates Better Integration of Food Safety Mechanisms

The Food Safety Research Consortium (FSRC) has released a report titled Strong Partnerships for Safer Food: An Agenda for Strengthening State and Local Roles in the Nation’s Food Safety System, which recommends the creation of an “integrated food safety system that operates as a full partnership among federal, state and local agencies.” A collaboration among diverse research institutions, FSRC aims to develop “analytical and decision tools for devising research, regulatory, and educational interventions and making resource allocation decisions” related to food safety reform. This latest project involved the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services in partnership with the Association of Food and Drug Officials, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, and National Association of County and City Health Officials.

In addition to detailing the strengths and weakness of the current system, the report makes 19 recommendations designed to support the state and local agencies that bear “primary responsibility for illness surveillance, response to outbreaks, and regulation of food safety in over one million restaurants and grocery stores.” FSRC specifically calls on Congress to (i) “give the secretary of Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) a legislative mandate to lead the development of an integrated, national food safety system”; (ii) “establish and fund an intergovernmental Food Safety Leadership Council (FSLC)”; (iii) “direct the secretary of HHS to create, in collaboration with the states, a National Foodborne Illness Data Program”; and (iv) “establish traceability requirements that permit federal, state, and local officials to rapidly obtain from food companies reliable information on the source of commodities, ingredients and finished products.”

The report also asks state and local government to “maintain adequate and stable funding streams to play their proper role” in a preventative food safety network. “In fact,” concludes the report, “food safety reform at the federal level will remain an incomplete solution to today’s food safety challenges unless state and local roles are strengthened and better integrated into the national food safety system.”