Safe Food_ Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism - Marion Nestle [84]
a unified and central framework for managing federal food safety programs, one that is headed by a single official and which has the responsibility and control of resources for all federal food safety activities. . . . This recommendation envisions an identifiable, high-ranking, presidentially appointed head, who would direct and coordinate federal activities and speak to the nation, giving federal food safety efforts a single voice. The structure created, and the person heading it, should have control over the resources Congress allocates to the food safety effort; the structure should also have a firm foundation in statute and thus not be temporary and easily changed by political agendas or executive directives. . . . The most viable means of achieving these goals would be to create a single, unified agency headed by a single administrator.42
In arguing for one accountable official, the NRC deliberately rejected two other leadership options, one of them a joint coordinating committee like the one in charge of the Food Safety Initiative. President Clinton, however, ignored this advice. Instead of appointing a czar, he did something even less likely to be effective. He appointed a troika—a President’s Council on Food Safety led by three people: the secretaries of USDA and DHHS and a high-level science advisor. A spokesman for the National Food Processors Association seemed delighted that the program would not be led by a single person holding considerable power and said, apparently without irony: “When you have a czar, that would probably create a new bureaucracy. . . . It is important to keep politics out of food safety.”54
In its formal announcement of a National Food Safety Initiative, the troika produced this cheerfully optimistic vision statement:
Consumers can be confident that food is safe, healthy, and affordable. We work within a seamless food safety system that uses farm-to-table preventive strategies and integrated research, surveillance, inspection, and enforcement. We are vigilant to new and emergent threats and consider the needs of vulnerable populations. We use science- and risk-based approaches along with public/private partnerships. Food is safe because everyone understands and accepts their responsibilities.55
To support this vision, Congress allocated a budget of $370 million for the entire surveillance, coordination, inspection, risk-assessment, education, and research components of the initiative for fiscal year 2000. This figure amounted to about $1.50 per person and was about the same size as the advertising budget of Burger King that year. One full year after release of the NRC report, officials of the FDA and USDA seemed in no hurry to make progress on its recommendations. Instead, the troika of the Council on Food Safety, now joined by the secretary of commerce as a fourth member, was at work on yet another report. When released early in 2000, the report made no specific recommendation for structural change but instead suggested a range of options for consideration: (1) tweaking the current system so that it would speak with a “single voice”; (2) tweaking it to make one agency (but not necessarily the same one) responsible for chairing the council, leading the efforts, or overseeing everything having to do with specific food products such as pizza or sandwiches; (3) giving one unit within each agency full responsibility for all of that agency’s food safety functions; or (4) creating