As foodborne illnesses sicken tens of millions each year, FDA falls behind on mandated inspections

The Food and Drug Administration has not performed its legally required number of food safety inspections each year since 2018, according to a new government watchdog report.

Each year, about one in six Americans falls ill to foodborne illnesses, and oversight agencies have routinely found that the U.S. food safety system — a shared responsibility of the FDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and several others — falls short.

In 2017, the Government Accountability Office called for a unified strategy to address food safety, as no less than eight different federal departments had a hand in fortifying the nation’s food. And in 2018, the GAO criticized the USDA for not doing enough to keep foodborne pathogens out of the nation’s meat supply.

In 2021, ProPublica found that the USDA knew of an ongoing salmonella outbreak but had allowed contaminated meat to continue to be sold.

Generally, the USDA inspects meat and poultry, and it sometimes has inspectors stationed inside large meat processing plants. The FDA inspects fruits, vegetables, dairy products and processed foods — about 80% of the food supply. It also inspects food overseas that will be imported to the U.S.

“Given the large number of food facilities and the agency’s limited resources, meeting the existing inspection mandates has been challenging for the agency,” the FDA told the GAO. However, the “FDA is excited for the work underway” at the agency to address food safety.

In October 2024, the FDA announced it was implementing a near agency-wide reorganization that it said would help it better oversee the nation’s food supply.

The reorganization was prompted, in part, by the FDA’s delayed response to a whistleblower complaint about infant formula produced at an Abbott Nutrition factory. Despite receiving the complaint, the agency took no action for 15 months, during which time several infants fell ill after consuming the contaminated formula.

In its announcement, the FDA said it was “focused on transforming the agency to be more efficient, nimble and ready for the future.”

COVID-19 inhibited inspections

The FDA is required to inspect about 75,000 food facilities in the U.S. each year, according to the GAO’s report, published Jan. 8. However, between 2018 and 2023, the latest year data is available, it failed to perform the number of inspections mandated by the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act.

One reason the FDA fell behind was the COVID-19 pandemic. It affected the agency’s ability to conduct in-person inspections (as it did for other agencies, such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration).

The year of the pandemic, the FDA only inspected 7% of facilities identified as “high-risk” for foodborne illnesses, according to the GAO. The number increased to about half the following years.

Still, the pandemic created a significant backlog, which the agency is still dealing with, the GAO said.

“While it is unclear when FDA will be able to clear the backlog of past due inspections created during the pandemic, FDA officials told us they are taking steps to address it,” the watchdog said in its report.

Inspection gaps, staffing challenges

Another challenge is the lack of experienced inspectors. As of 2024, the agency had 432 inspectors, which the GAO said was 90% its full capacity.

As of mid-2024, a quarter of FDA food inspectors were eligible for retirement, and more will be eligible by summer 2025. (The GAO report does not say how many retired.) The FDA is hiring new staff, but “the hiring rate has not outpaced losses,” the GAO reported.

When a foodborne illness outbreak does occur, FDA inspectors must focus their attention on the outbreak. But that adds to the backlog of regular inspections, the GAO said: Prioritizing outbreaks “directly affects” the agency’s ability to conduct inspections that might prevent outbreaks.

Adding to the workforce issue is that it takes about two years to train a new food inspector.

The FDA said it had stepped up efforts to recruit qualified inspectors, including offering student loan reimbursements.

“While these actions represent positive steps,” the GAO said, “FDA continues to face long-standing and significant workforce capacity challenges.”

The USDA has also struggled to hire and retain food safety inspectors. Even before the pandemic — when meat processing plants were known COVID-19 hotspots — agency employees reported feeling burned out with heavy workloads, Investigate Midwest reported in 2019.

For instance, due to low staffing, one USDA food inspector, at eight months pregnant, was working double shifts.

Too few overseas inspections

The FDA is required to perform about 19,000 food safety inspections overseas each year, as the U.S. imports many foods consumers want year-round, such as bananas. It also did not meet this threshold, averaging just 5% of the required figure between 2018 and 2023.

The FDA told the GAO that the required number of foreign inspections was unrealistic. As of mid-2024, just 20 employees were dedicated to foreign inspections.

In 2015, the GAO recommended the FDA determine a reasonable target for foreign inspections. Responding to this latest GAO report, the FDA said it would not do so.

“FDA officials told us in August 2024 — nearly 10 years after we made our recommendation — that they do not intend to take any further action to address it,” the GAO said. “We maintain that identifying an appropriate annual target for conducting foreign inspections and using it to assess FDA’s performance in safeguarding imported food is important.”