President's Council on Food Safety

U.S. Department of Agriculture	Department of Health and Human Services	Environmental Protection Agency	Department of Commerce

Americans have one of the world's safest food supplies. This is largely a result of sustained regulatory and education programs along the farm to table continuum as well as surveillance and research efforts. The federal food safety system, comprised of multiple agencies, is authorized by a diverse set of statutes and is supported by numerous key partnerships with state, local, and tribal governments. Together these agencies have created a system that has given U.S. consumers confidence in the safety of their food purchases.

As good as the nation’s food safety system is, there is room for improvement. Illnesses and deaths due to contaminated food, while preventable, continue to cause considerable human suffering and economic loss. That is why, at the very beginning of his first term, President Clinton set a course to strengthen the nation’s food safety system. Under the President’s leadership, surveillance and research have dramatically increased, programs are better coordinated, and regulations are more prevention-oriented and science-based. But this is only the beginning. The Council on Food Safety, with the help of the public, will continue to identify problems and promote solutions.

The Council welcomes the findings and recommendations provided by the National Academy of Sciences in its August 1998 report Ensuring Safe Food From Production to Consumption. This report lays out a clear rationale for a national food safety plan, one that is based on science and risk assessment.

• The Council supports NAS recommendation I, which states that the food safety system should be based on science. In its assessment of the NAS report, the Council provides numerous examples in which this is already the case and examples of areas that need to be strengthened.
• The Council supports NAS recommendation IIa, which calls for federal statutes to be based on scientifically supportable assessments of risk to public health. In this regard, the Council will conduct a thorough review of existing statutes and determine what can be accomplished with existing regulatory flexibility and what improvements will require statutory changes.
• The Council supports NAS recommendation IIb, which calls for the production of a comprehensive national food safety plan. In fact, the development of such a plan is already underway and is one of the primary functions of the Council as specified in Executive Order 13100. One component of the plan will be exploring methods to assess the comparative health risks to the nation’s food supply.
• The Council supports the goal of NAS recommendation IIIa. Here, the NAS calls for a new statute that establishes a unified framework for food safety programs with a single official with control over all federal food safety resources. The report acknowledges that there may be many organizational approaches to achieving the goal of a "single voice" for federal food safety activities. The Council will conduct an assessment of structural models and other mechanisms that could strengthen the federal food safety system through better coordination, planning, and resource allocation, keeping in mind that the primary goal is food safety and public health.
• The Council supports NAS recommendation IIIb. This recommendation argues that agencies should have the legal authority and other tools needed to work more effectively with our partners in state, tribal, and local governments. Federal food safety agencies already have many of the tools identified by the NAS and have used them to establish extensive partnerships with state, tribal, and local governments. However, some tools are missing and much more needs to be done to better coordinate the federal government’s interactions with other levels of government. The Council agrees that the roles of state, tribal, and local governments in the food safety system are critical and that their efforts deserve the formal recognition that partnership in a national food safety system conveys.

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Webmaster | Last updated on 1999-MAR-26 by rwk/dms

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