FDA Responsibilities and Resources

FDA Regulates:

$417 billion worth of domestic food and $49 billion of imported food¹
All vegetables, fruits, nuts, dairy products, breads, cereals and fresh eggs²
136,000 domestic food facilities, including manufacturers, processors and warehouses including storage tanks and grain elevators³
Two million farms, 935,000 restaurants and institutional food-service establishments, and 114,000 supermarkets, grocery stores and other food outlets⁴
One hundred and eighty-nine thousand foreign facilities are registered to manufacture, process, pack or hold food Americans eat⁵

FDA Lacks Resources to Keep Nation’s Food Safe:

FDA accounted for only 24 percent of the $1.7 billion federal agencies spent on food safety activities in FY 2003⁶
FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) staffing declined 14 percent between FY 2003 and FY 2006, from 950 staff years to 812⁷ FDA’s field inspection staff responsible for food safety enforcement declined 11.5 percent between FY 2003 and FY 2006, from 2,217 staff years to 1,962⁸
Inspections of the 189,000 foreign food firms declined from 211 in FY 2001 to fewer than 100 in fiscal year 2007⁹
FDA estimates that it inspects food manufacturers once every 10 years¹⁰

¹HHS, FDA Food Protection Plan, An integrated strategy for protecting the nation's food supply,(2007)6, available here.
²Ibid.
³Ibid.
⁴Ibid.
⁵Ibid.
⁶House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, American Lives Still at Risk: When Will FDA’s Food Protection Plan Be Fully Funded and Implemented? 110th Cong. Sess.2 June 12, 2008, available here.
⁷HHS, FDA, Science Board to the FDA, Report of the Subcommittee on Science and Technology, FDA Science and Mission at Risk (2007), available here.
⁸House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, American Lives Still at Risk, June 12, 2008.
⁹Ibid.
¹⁰ FDA, Science Board to the FDA (2007) 3, available here.

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