The Counter – FDA pauses routine food inspections for the indefinite future
Food and Drug Administration pauses routine food inspections for the indefinite future
03.19.2020
These inspections were one more link in an overtaxed and weakened food system safety net.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Wednesday that it would temporarily suspend routine surveillance inspections of food manufacturers and handlers because of Covid-19. So-called “mission-critical” inspections will be considered on a case-by-case basis. The agency did not disclose how long it expects the pause to last.
So what does this mean for the safety of the food supply?
Maybe not a whole lot in the short term, says Ben Chapman, food safety specialist and professor at North Carolina State University. “There’s a myth about how food is kept safe. Regulation, inspection, and enforcement is really just one pillar of what happens in our food safety system,” he says. MORE