Customs and Border Protection, the FDA and USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service have taken steps to address challenges in ensuring the safety of the increasing volume of imported food, but gaps in enforcement and collaboration undermine their efforts, GAO has said.
GAO analyzed CBP, FDA, and FSIS procedures, reports, and regulations and interviewed agency officials and key stakeholders. It said CBP maintains the system that importers use to provide information to FDA on food shipments, that FDA electronically reviews food imports and inspects some foreign food production facilities, and that FSIS requires countries to demonstrate that their food safety systems provide the same level of protection the US does.
However, according to GAO-09-873, CBP’s computer system does not currently notify FDA or FSIS when imported food shipments arrive at US ports, although efforts are underway to provide this information to FDA for air and truck shipments.
It said FDA has limited authority to ensure importers’ compliance with its regulations, that CBP and FDA do not identify importers with a unique number, and that CBP faces challenges in managing in-bond shipments – those just passing through.
GAO made a number of recommendations, including a suggestion that the FDA commissioner explore ways to improve the agency’s ability to identify foreign firms with a unique identifier.
It also, for example, called on CBP to implement an interagency agreement with FDA to provide time-of-arrival information and explore opportunities to implement a similar agreement with FSIS – and it called on the FDA to determine what violations should be subject to a new civil penalties authority covering those that break food import laws.
