Food Safety: Agencies' Handling of a Dioxin Incident Caused Hardships for Some Producers and Processors

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the performance of federal agencies in handling their investigation into elevated dioxin levels in poultry samples, focusing on: (1) the basis for the agencies' decisions to require producers to demonstrate their food products did not contain levels of dioxin above one part per trillion; (2) their effectiveness in working together to make decisions to address the problem of dioxin; and (3) the impact of the food safety system on the handling of this dioxin incident.