Summary

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for ensuring that foreign cheese imported into the United States meets the same safety and labeling standards applied to domestic cheese. Some exporting countries do not have food safety standards similar to those in the United States, and their cheeses have had higher contamination rates than cheeses imported from other countries. Although FDA has tried to develop certification programs requiring foreign exports to meet U.S. standards, it has only one certification program for cheese--with France. FDA, however, has not formally monitored the French program and lacks enough data to determine the program's effectiveness. GAO is also concerned about the low percentage of product samples from imported cheeses that FDA collects and analyzes for contamination. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Food Safety and Quality: FDA Can Improve Monitoring of Imported Cheese, by William E. Gahr, Associate Director for Food and Agriculture Issues, before the Subcommittee on International Economic Policy and Trade, House Committee on Foreign Affairs. GAO/T-RCED-92-79, July 9, 1992 (eight pages).

GAO found that: (1) FDA generally categorizes cheeses, especially soft and semi-soft styles, as high-risk food because they are susceptible to contamination by potentially fatal bacteria; (2) about 35 percent of all cheeses imported to the United States are soft or semi-soft types, which are highly susceptible to microbial contamination because of their high moisture content; (3) products from some exporting countries have had a higher incidence of bacteriological contamination than other countries and have been refused entry more frequently because those countries did not have food safety standards similar to those in the United States; (4) FDA has worked with exporting countries, such as France and Italy, whose cheese products have had higher violation rates, to develop certification programs for testing cheese exported to the United States; (5) under the French certification program, the government inspects cheese manufacturing facilities exporting to the United States and certifies that the facilities are listeria-free; (6) the effectiveness of the French certification program is unknown because FDA has not formally monitored the program and does not maintain sufficient data on cheese imported under the program; and (7) there are a number of problems with the FDA inspection procedures for imported foods, such as low sampling rates, which do not provide adequate inspection coverage, making comprehensive monitoring of certification programs even more critical.