The Food and Drug Administration is not staffed to handle the growing complexity of food inspection, especially now that a significant amount comes from abroad and is never inspected, a leading candidate to head the embattled agency said yesterday.
Dr. Steven Nissen, chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic -- and reported to be on President Barack Obama's short list to become FDA chief -- said food inspection is swamped by the FDA's other responsibilities: the approval of medications and medical devices.
The result is an overworked and understaffed agency continually hit by sweeping food scares that sicken scores of people and sometimes result in death.
"The truth be told, the FDA is a failed agency ... the main problem is that it is terribly underfunded," Nissen said. "It needs to do more inspections, especially of foods brought in internationally. We are all very vulnerable. This has to be fixed and fixed quickly."
Nissen is no stranger to speaking out against the FDA and has garnered the spotlight for occasionally taking the agency to task, even while serving as a committee member on high-profile FDA drug panels.
He is widely known as a physician-activist and doesn't mind taking heat from drug companies when he finds deadly flaws in their products.
Nissen led the debate over Merck & Co.'s Vioxx, revealing the drug could be a potent cause of heart attacks, a discovery that helped lead to the drug's recall in 2002. In 2007, he alerted the nation about Avandia, a diabetes drug that also could cause heart attacks. His crusade prompted the FDA to add its highest level of caution to Avandia's label: a black box warning.
Now he says it's time for the FDA to get serious about food inspection because the nation is at risk. Since 2006, E. coli has tainted spinach and lettuce in separate outbreaks that stretched across several states. Salmonella contaminated peanut butter in 2007 and jalapenos in a wide-ranging outbreak last year.
"Here's one of the problems: Foods have two major inspection agencies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the FDA. I think all of it needs to be under one roof," Nissen said yesterday.
His call for stronger food inspection practices are echoed by food safety advocates who also say the FDA is understaffed and overworked.
Nissen -- who was in Washington for the Obama inauguration -- would not say whether he has received word who will head the FDA. Former Democratic National Committee chief Howard Dean is said to be another candidate. To see more of Newsday, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.newsday.com Copyright (c) 2009, Newsday, Melville, N.Y. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2009, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.