Summary

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) inspections of domestic food firms, focusing on the: (1) criteria FDA used to select firms for inspections; (2) frequency with which FDA inspected firms with low risks for product adulteration; and (3) results of those inspections.

GAO found that FDA: (1) issued October 1986 guidance instructing field offices to concentrate inspection resources on food firms with a history of violations; (2) lacked criteria for determining the frequency of inspections; (3) and its state contractors inspected about 11,500 domestic food firms during fiscal year (FY) 1987; (4) conducted 90 percent of those inspections for routine surveillance, not compliance purposes, and most of the surveillance inspections did not reveal any serious violations; (5) spent over half of its inspection resources on low-risk firms; (6) inspected less than half of firms with violation histories, including those firms that its state contractors had previously identified; (7) did not consider the extent to which state agencies independently inspected certain firms when scheduling its own inspections; and (8) believes that it needs to maintain its level of routine surveillance inspections.