Seafood leading cause of foodborne illness outbreaks, study says
"Seafood and other foods regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) caused four times more outbreaks than meat and poultry products, which are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, CSPI's director of food safety. "Despite that, the FDA has only one-tenth as many food-safety inspectors, and about one-third of the inspection budget of the USDA. That represents a huge gap in consumers' protection against unsafe food."
FDA currently has only 150 inspectors to check on 3.7 million shipments of imported food and inspects domestic food plants only once every five years. FDA recently informed Congress that it needs significant new resources to protect the food supply, including $800 million to enhance domestic inspections and $540 million to inspect 20 percent of the shipments of imported food.