AMU Emergency Management Public Safety

Report: FDA Too Slow to Order Food Recalls

Report from the Office of Inspector General critical of FDA practices

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is often too slow to order companies to recall tainted foods, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) said in a recent report, which is opening the door to unnecessary illnesses.

The FDA’s slowness in making food recalls, the report said, is leading to an increased risk of illness and death in food recall incidents. More specifically, the OIG took issue with the FDA’s recall initiation process, saying that it was neither efficient nor effective, and, in turn, was leading to overall safety of the U.S. food supply.

Even more specifically, the OIG found that policies within the FDA led to untimely and inefficient voluntary recalls, because internal procedures did not mandate that recall staff inform firms of time and manner with which to conduct these types of recalls.

We found that FDA did not have an efficient and effective food recall initiation process that
helps ensure the safety of the Nation’s food supply. Specifically, we found that FDA’s policies
and procedures did not instruct its recall staff to prescribe to the firms a time and a manner in
which to initiate the voluntary recall.

Issues with voluntary food recalls

In the study, the OIG found that in all 30 voluntary recalls in the sample, the FDA did not “prescribe a timeline for each
firm to initiate a recall” after an “adulterated or misbranded” product was discovered to exist in the food supply chain.

Even worse, in two of the 30 samples, the firms involved did not initiate the recall of all potentially
harmful products until 81 days or more. One of the two firms initiated an all encompassing recall 81 days after the FDA became aware of the harmful products, while the second firm didn’t complete a full recall until after 165 days.

See all current recalls of all FDA-regulated products [link url=”http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/” title=”here“]

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