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Food Safety: Controls Can Be Strengthened to Reduce the Risk of Disease Linked to Unsafe Animal Feed

RCED-00-255 Published: Sep 22, 2000. Publicly Released: Oct 23, 2000.
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Highlights

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the risks to human health posed by unsafe feed consumed by food-producing animals, focusing on the: (1) extent to which unsafe feed has been linked to human health problems in the United States; and (2) actions the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Transportation (DOT) are taking to ensure the safety of animal feed.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Food and Drug Administration To ensure that animal feed in the United States remains free of contaminants that would cause BSE, the Commissioner of FDA should develop and implement an enforcement strategy that contains specific goals and time frames for establishing a system to correct the deficiencies identified during the agency's 2 years of inspecting animal feed firms and to ensure that firms in the future continue to remain in compliance with the regulation.
Closed – Implemented
FDA revised its BSE Feed Ban implementation and enforcement approach to better target higher risk facilities for inspection. This action largely address GAO's recommendation.
Food and Drug Administration The Commissioner of FDA should establish a schedule for completing the agency's hazard analysis and critical control point-based approach for ensuring the safety of animal feeds.
Closed – Implemented
Agency implemented a risk-based approach for ensuring the safety of animal feed for cattle from BSE.
President's Council on Food Safety To ensure the safe transportation of animal feed, the President's Council on Food Safety should work with DOT and FDA, among others, to develop a strategy to regulate animal feed while in transport.
Closed – Not Implemented
The President's Council on Food Safety is no longer active. However, in a current assignment, GAO will likely recommend that FDA should implement a regulation, backed by guidance, that FDA investigators and state inspectors ensure that both incoming raw materials and outgoing finished products from firms subject to the feed ban are inspected. The procedure should include an inspection of the vehicles used to transport the products both into and from the feed establishments to ensure that prohibited materials are not mingled with unprohibited materials. This new recommendation will essentially replace the recommendation GAO included in the 00-255 report.

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Topics

Animal feed and drugsContaminantsContaminated foodsFeed contaminationFeed industryFood safetyHealth hazardsLivestockLivestock productsProduct safetyQuality controlSafety regulationSafety standards