Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said March 11 that about one in six people are made sick by the food they eat, and thousands die each year as a result of foodborne illnesses. Testifying before the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, Hamburg said, "We're seeing preventable deaths" and "even more preventable illnesses" that are "associated with a set of other preventable costs to the health care system and a cost to economic productivity."
"We are trying to create a food safety system of the 21st century," Hamburg told the panel as she defended the Obama administration's request for $183 million in new FDA funding for fiscal 2012 to aid in implementing the new food safety law that was signed late last year. That law calls for eventually expanding FDA by 17,000 employees –– most of whom would be inspectors –– and pumping $1.4 billion into the agency over 10 years.
Subcommittee Chairman Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) wasn't convinced of the need. He said the new law seems like an unwarranted expansion of FDA given recent federal statistics showing a decline in deaths from food-borne illnesses to 3,000 a year from 5,000 and a drop in overall yearly food illnesses to 48 million people from 75 million.
Kingston and the Republican staff of the Ag Appropriations Subcommittee already have proposed a cut of $241 million in FDA's food safety efforts for fiscal 2011, a provision that is included in the spending bill (HR1) approved by the House in February. A similar cut for FY12 is expected to emerge from Kingston's panel.
