Don't gag, but food czar needed

The Food and Drug Administration's new focus on food safety, especially on imports, is overdue. But meaningful progress will be made only when Congress allocates more resources to increase inspections and create a surveillance system to spot problems early.

The vulnerability of the U.S. food supply was exposed when contaminated wheat gluten and rice protein from China made its way into U.S. dog food and feed for animals slaughtered for human consumption. The FDA is investigating allegations that as many as 4,000 pet deaths are linked to the contaminated pet food. But federal officials believe the chance of illness in humans is small. Still, it is stunning to note that only 1.5 percent of food imports are inspected by the Food and Drug Administration. Consumer advocates long have raised concerns that American consumers are vulnerable from food imported from countries with lower environmental and pesticide standards than the United States'.

This week, the FDA established a new position — assistant commissioner for food protection. The first task for David Acheson, a physician who has researched food-borne pathogens extensively, is crafting a strategy to ensure food safety and defend the food system from people who would deliberately try to compromise it.

The U.S. Senate also this week approved a provision by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to strengthen the food-safety system. The amendment to a Food and Drug Administration reauthorization bill would establish an early-notification system for food problems, increase inspections of foreign imports and create a database to help spot patterns needing investigation.

Imports aren't the only challenge. During the past year, hundreds of people were sickened by salmonella in peanut butter and by E. coli in organic spinach. At least five people died between the two cases. A surveillance system might have noticed earlier the pattern of problems in the Central California area where the spinach was produced.

Durbin proposed another bill to put food-safety monitoring under one agency. It now falls to 12 separate agencies. The proposal also calls for increased inspections domestically — something that has fallen off in recent years.

The new attention to food safety is welcome. It is a shame it took a rash of food-caused human illnesses, deaths and pet deaths to make this a priority.