In the wake of a national peanut recall—which preceded a national pistachio recall but followed the nation’s largest ever beef recall, an international pet food recall, and outbreaks of food borne illness connected to fresh peppers and spinach—the movement to create a more unified food inspection program has gained substantial traction. While many groups, including the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), have been calling for reform of the system for more than a decade, this discussion seems to have drawn enthusiastic new supporters in recent months.

Most recently, the Trust for America's Health has joined many other health and food safety organizations that are calling for a reorganization of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). What’s more, it’s not just food safety advocates that are speaking out in favor of this concept. In fact, the idea is popular with those concerned about drug inspections as well. Drug company executives are quietly supporting a split of the FDA out of concerns that its current configuration is or will slow down new drug approvals.

It’s still unclear what the Obama administration plans to do about the situation. While President Obama has discussed an overhaul of the food safety agencies in the past, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Congress on March 31 that it was premature to determine how food regulations and inspections should be organized. He also stated that the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have competing philosophies.

We at keepourfoodsafe.org would argue that this last statement alone would seem to indicate that unified leadership to oversee food safety might be a good idea.  Food inspectors, physicians, public health veterinarians and everyone involved in the food inspection process would be better served by unified leadership instead of competing agencies with competing philosophies.  A unified agency with a single approach should be granted the resources required to manage the full scope of the food quality assurance programs from farm to fork.

Whatever reforms do take place in Washington, DC in the coming months, we at www.keepourfoodsafe.org would like to remind the politicians that they have experts across the country—veterinarians on farms and in government offices, physicians and nurses, associations like the American Medical Association and the AVMA (along with the One Health Commission, which links human, animal and environmental health), and the farmers and food producers themselves. Working together, America’s already excellent level of food safety can and will be improved.