I was recently a “guest-blogger” for my good colleague John Dunham, founder of the economic consulting firm John Dunham & Associates. The topic I chose was the Food Safety Modernization Act, and the implications and reasons for its delayed implementation. Below is the start of my contribution, for the entire blog posting, please go to John Dunham and Associates – Monthly Manifesto.

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President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act (H.R. 2751) into law on January 4, 2011, but two and half years later is our food any safer? A folksy video posted on the FDA website vividly explained the need for the 2011 bill in these terms:

“The last major update to our food safety laws was way back in 1938, and a lot has changed since then. Our food now often travels more than we do. It arrives from farms and facilities across town or around the world, on trains, ships and trucks. At the same time, pathogens are changing, adapting, and sometimes becoming stronger and harder to defeat. At any point from farm to table, pathogens such as Salmonella, E. Coli or Listeria can catch a ride, and spread to virtually any food. And people are living longer, and with chronic disease, making them more susceptible to food-borne illness. For these reasons, we need a Food Safety system for the Twenty-First Century.”

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) of 2011 was intended to shift the emphasis from reaction to prevention of food safety issues, by requiring mandatory preventive controls for food facilities, mandatory produce safety standards, and protections against the importation of unsafe food products. Further, the FSMA gave the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) stronger tools in terms of mandated inspection frequency, records access, accreditation of testing laboratories, and when all else fails, authority to mandate recalls of unsafe product. These were all well-conceived policy changes, driven by the highly-regarded FDA head, Dr. Margaret Hamburg. Unfortunately, the FDA has been dragging its heels in creating and implementing the specific new rules needed to gain the desired benefits of the new law, so our food safety has actually not been improved – even 30 months after the law was passed.