Agency consolidation shown to improve food safety

The GAO has recommended several times before that the safety and quality of the US food supply should be governed by a single body instead of through 15 separate agencies, as is the case at present.

This most recent report published this week examined the experiences of those countries - such as Canada, the Netherlands and Denmark - which have recently streamlined their food safety systems. Gary Brown, joint author of the report with Chris Gobin, told FoodNavigatorUSA.com that they believe many of the ideas tested in other countries could be transferred to the US.

However, in commenting on a draft of the report - it was too early for feedback to be given on the final version - the HHS and USDA said that other countries' consolidation experiences have limited applicability to the U.S. food safety system because the countries are much smaller than the United States.

The report authors acknowledged that this was the case, but said that because they, like the States, are high-income countries where consumers have very high expectations for food safety, lessons could be learned.

Opinions in the US, though, remain divided, between those who have long campaigned for more consolidation and those who, despite growing fears over the potential threat of bio-terrorism, believe the current system works best.

The biggest challenges faced by the US, if agency consolidation were initiated, would be cultural change and start-up costs, according to Brown.

"People from a health, agricultural and other backgrounds would have to work together,"​ he said.

Brown and Gobin admitted, though, that one of the short-falls of this report is the lack of quantifiable data and therefore were unable to give an estimate start-up figure.

However, they said that in the Netherlands, for example: "officials said that reduced duplication in food safety inspections would likely result in decreased food safety spending and that they anticipate a 25 percent reduction in administration and personnel costs"​.

Moreover, according to Canadian officials, in fiscal year 1998 Canada spent C$25 million (US$18 million) - 7 percent of the agency's fiscal year1998 budget -in start-up funds to consolidate food safety inspections.

This sum was justified by a senior Canadian official, who stated that during the agency's first two years, the consolidation reduced food safety operating expenditures by 10 percent.

The seven countries examined in the report​ were Canada, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.