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Imported food still largely undiscovered territory

Immediately after the horrifying attacks of September 11, 2001, a swirl of newly urgent safety questions arose.

Many observers in government and elsewhere quickly identified the food supply as a likely target. It’s large, multifaceted, crucial to all Americans, and vulnerable. Chief among the vulnerabilities, it was commonly concluded, are the vast amounts of imported foods. When foods come from other countries, there can be less knowledge of and less control over their safety.

Nine years and two administrations later, food import oversight is still a gap-strewn landscape. According to a May 2010 report from the Government Accountability Office:
• There are an estimated 180,000 foreign food facilities registered with the Food and Drug Administration as potential sources of imports into the U.S.;
• In 2008, FDA inspected 153 of them, and 95 in 2007; and
• The number of FDA inspections of food firms in other countries was 211 in 2001, then has been under 200 every year since.

Packagers who want to assure the safety of the foods or ingredients they import are well advised to rely on their own due diligence, contractual terms, and inspectional programs, rather than the oversight of governments.

The recent headlines about food safety have not been about terror, but about more old-fashioned microbial contaminations of foods like fresh produce, powdered milk, and meats, for example. But many believe enhanced oversight of imported food is one stone that would hit both these birds, as protections against contaminated food would presumably pick up the intentionally poisoned as well as the merely unwholesome.

Food makers in other countries who want to import into the U.S. are required by law to be registered with FDA, and importers have to give specific notice to FDA in advance of importation, thanks to changes in the law made after 2001’s attacks.

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