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authority but also increased the divergence of responsibilities between its two bureaus. For example, the 1906 Meat Inspection Act did not apply to poultry, which was then largely produced on small farms for local sale. As production grew in size and concentration, large flocks of chickens occasionally suffered from outbreaks of influenza. These illnesses worried consumers. To help the industry overcome fears that its chickens might transmit disease, the USDA encouraged voluntary inspection and certification programs. The department reasoned—correctly—that consumers were more likely to buy poultry when it was stamped “inspected for wholesomeness by U.S. Department of Agriculture.” Legislation passed in 1957 and 1968 made these programs mandatory and required the USDA to inspect most chickens and turkeys sold to the public. Throughout the twentieth century, the USDA remained in charge of meat and poultry safety through a firmly entrenched inspection system now run by the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). Over the years, reorganizations of USDA agencies and amendments to the Pure Food and Drugs Act led to the creation of the FDA in 1930, its transfer out of USDA in 1940 and, eventually, its incorporation into the Department of Health and Human Services.10 As we will see, meat inspections remained under USDA control, not only because the agency employed veterinarians, but also because meat and dairy producers, who did not hesitate to express themselves about the matter, much preferred its sympathetic stance on regulatory issues to the more rigorous enforcement approach of the FDA—a legacy of its founder, Dr. Wiley.

UNDERSTANDING FOOD SAFETY OVERSIGHT

A century later, the consequences of the division of food safety oversight are only too evident. The initial system worked well to keep sick animals out of the food supply but was poorly designed to deal with the challenge of microbes that affected a wider variety of foods. Congress passed subsequent amendments to the two 1906 laws without much concern about the need to coordinate oversight of the food supply as a whole. As one General Accounting Office (GAO) official explained to Congress,

The federal regulatory system for food safety did not emerge from a comprehensive design but rather evolved piecemeal, typically in response to particular health threats or economic crises. Addressing one new worry after another, legislators amended old laws and enacted new ones. The resulting organizational and legal patchwork has given responsibility for specific food commodities to different agencies and provided them with significantly different regulatory authorities and responsibilities.47

Today, an inventory of federal food safety activities reveals a system breathtaking in its irrationality: 35 separate laws administered by 12 agencies housed in six cabinet-level departments. Table 6 lists these agencies and summarizes their areas of responsibility. At best, a structure as fragmented as this one would require extraordinary efforts to achieve communication, let alone coordination, and more than 50 interagency agreements govern such efforts. Among the six agencies with the broadest mandates, all conduct inspections and collect and analyze samples, and at least three—though not necessarily the same ones—have something to do with regulating dairy products, for example, as well as eggs and egg products, fruits and vegetables, grains, and meat and poultry. Until recently, the system had no mission statement (for whatever such statements are worth), and it still does not have consistent rules, clear lines of authority, a rational allocation of resources, or standards against which to measure success. With such a system, some issues—such as the use of animal manure to fertilize food crops—inevitably fall between the cracks and are governed by no rules whatsoever.48

The consequences of this system are famously absurd, and table 7 summarizes some of the more exquisite examples. The USDA, for example, oversees production of hot dogs in pastry dough; the FDA regulates