Food Safety Initiative Fact Sheet

May 12, 1997

"We have built a solid foundation for the health of America's families. But clearly we must do more. No parent should have to think twice about the juice they pour their children at breakfast, or a hamburger ordered during dinner out."

--President Bill Clinton, Radio Address, January 25, 1997

Working with consumers, producers, industry, states, universities, and the public, the Administration has developed measures to reduce foodborne illness from microbial contaminants; the Administration will:

• Improve inspections and expand preventive safety measures: FDA will use $8.5 million of the new funds, in part, to hire additional Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspectors for seafood plants and to expand the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) approach to the fruit and vegetable juice industries. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will propose preventive measures, including HACCP, this year for egg products.
• Increase research to develop new tests to detect foodborne pathogens and to assess risks in the food supply: The agencies will target $16.5 million to critical research needs, such as giving federal, state and local food safety officials new tools to detect these pathogens, some of which -- like the Hepatitis A virus and cyclospora -- cannot now be detected in many foods.
• Build a national Early Warning System to detect and respond to outbreaks of foodborne illness earlier, and to give us the data we need to prevent future outbreaks: With $13.7 million of the new funds, USDA, FDA, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will increase the number of active "sentinel sites" across the country from 5 to 8 (current sites are in Northern California, Oregon, Minnesota, Georgia and Connecticut; new sites added this year are in New York and Maryland, and the eighth will open next year) and will equip these sites with new technology to identify the diseases and their sources and to communicate these findings nationwide rapidly.
• Establish a national education campaign that will improve food handling in homes and retail outlets. FDA, USDA, CDC, and the Department of Education will launch a new public-private partnership with industry, producer and consumer groups, and states to raise public awareness of safe food practices. Using public and private funds, the partnership will develop, disseminate, and evaluate a single food-safety slogan and several standard messages. USDA and FDA will use $4 million of the new 1998 funds to support this and other education activities.
• Strengthen coordination and improve efficiency: USDA, CDC, FDA and EPA will form a new intergovernmental group to improve federal, state and local responses to outbreaks of foodborne illnesses. Working with all stakeholders, the agencies will develop a strategic plan to further improve coordination, use resources more efficiently, and measure progress toward our common goal of reducing foodborne illness.

Food safety is a major public health challenge: millions of foodborne illnesses and thousands of food-related deaths occur annually. From the beginning, the Administration has made improving the safety of the nation's food supply a top public health priority.

• Building on the recommendations of the Vice President's National Performance Review, the President put in place new science-based, hazard prevention systems for seafood, meat, and poultry. In late 1995 the Administration issued new rules to ensure seafood safety. In July 1996, President Clinton announced new regulations to modernize the nation's meat and poultry inspection system for the first time in 90 years. The new Early Warning System will gather critical scientific data to further improve these prevention systems
• In August, 1996 President Clinton signed the Food Quality Protection Act -- a comprehensive overhaul of our laws that regulate pesticides in food putting in place reforms that the Administration had urged since 1993. These reforms will ensure health and safety for American families through a more protective, more stringent health-based standard plus special new provisions to protect the health of infants and children from pesticide risks.
• Last August, President Clinton also signed a new safe drinking water law that strengthens protections to ensure that American families have clean safe tap water -- improvements that the Administration has called for since September 1993.

More information on the National Food Safety Initiative Program is available at http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/fs-toc.html.

This is a mirror of the page that appeared at <http://www.fda.gov/opacom/foodsafety/fsfact.htm>