USDA Buy American Practices

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Agriculture's Office of Inspector General's (OIG) report on the food assistance program procurement practices of the Agricultural Marketing Service, Foreign Agricultural Service, and Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service. GAO noted that the OIG report: (1) focused on the agencies' compliance with their own requirements for purchasing domestic commodities for food assistance programs; (2) reviewed 197 contracts, 19 contractors, and 43 firms supplying products to the contractors; (3) found that a firm may have supplied over 1 million pounds of a foreign commodity for a domestic food program; and (4) found numerous problems with the agencies' internal controls for ensuring that they meet domestic procurement requirements and recommended several corrective actions.