Former FDA Official Warns of Lack of Funding for FSMA Import Mandates
A shortfall in funding for the Food and Drug Administration’s food import safety system could be exacerbated by the agency’s meager fiscal year 2019 budget request, said Michael Taylor, former deputy commissioner of FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Nutrition,…
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in a recent editorial in Food Safety News. “The president’s 2019 budget request for the Food and Drug Administration, now pending in Congress, is essentially flat for food safety, which means a decrease in actual purchasing power due to rising costs for delivering services,” Taylor, who is now co-chair of the board for consumer advocacy group Stop Foodborne Illness, said in the July 9 opinion piece. “In contrast, for FDA’s medical product programs, the 2019 budget requests an increase of more than $400 million,” he said. “This imbalance in investment priorities occurs despite the fact that Congress has appropriated only about half of what the Congressional Budget Office estimated would be needed to successfully implement [the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)].” The funding shortfall “will have consequences” for imports, where FDA has “put key pieces of the new system in place but is far short of the resources needed to fully implement the FSMA import mandate,” he said.