Last week was not a good week for the Food and Drug Administration’s management team. After months of being abused by the press, their "bosses" finally came down on them and dished out some abuse of their own. For starters, they were poked and prodded in a congressional hearing that pulled no punches in calling out the FDA’s inability to properly manage food inspections. Then, on the very next day, President Bush put another nail in their coffin, announcing the creation of a cabinet-level panel that was given sixty days to determine how to correct the flaws in import inspections. As if that wasn’t enough, the FDA stupidly announced amidst this fury their plan to shut down inspection labs, a decision that was lambasted to no end.

All of these attacks on the FDA are warranted. The organization has done little to meet it’s mission statement, the very meaning of its existence, which starts off by saying, "the FDA is responsible for protecting the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, our nation’s food supply…"

The safety of our nation’s food supply has been suspect in recent years and it has come to a head over the past twelve months, during which a rash of crises have occurred. The most reported was the illness and/or demise of the many pets that ingested melamine-tainted food brought in from China. It was then that a red flag was raised and it was soon discovered that some Chinese-raised fish were loaded with banned chemical substances and Chinese toothpaste was sweetened with anti-freeze.

Not just an internationally-driven issue, domestically produced foodstuff have been just as troubled. Late last year, many people across the US took ill (and some even died) after three major outbreaks; one of E Coli-laden spinach sold in grocery stores across the nation, another with tainted lettuce poisoning Taco Bell tacos, and another instance where salmonella-drenched peanut butter was discovered in the marketplace.

The common denominator in all of these occurrences was the fact that the discoveries were too little, too late. The FDA did not act until these items were on the shelves or tearing-apart the bellies of man and beast. The FDA has shown time and again that it can only react to problems and not prevent them from occurring. Such is a telltale symptom of a poorly managed operation.

The FDA perfectly represents a government bureaucracy: Rather than focusing on hands-on operations it instead focuses on paper pushing and operational waste. Despite having a number one responsibility of food safety (attainable only through effective inspections) the Administration employs only 1,750 inspectors (20% less than just five years ago). This group of employees represents less than one-fifth of the 9,000 people employed by the FDA. That means 80% of the FDA’s workforce is not specifically dedicated by its corporate structure to fulfill the organization’s mission statement and responsibility to the people. The vast majority of its employment files reports, issues documents and creates standards that it can never enforce. It has become a regulatory agency lacking in the ability - maybe even desire - to regulate.

You can see the results of this "direct" labor disconnect in the insignificance of the inspection efforts. Foreign imports of foods and ingredients have grown to a $71 billion industry, one that brings in 25,000 shipments a day of which only 1% are inspected. In terms of domestic inspections, it has been said that US food plants are inspected only once every five to ten years.

Those are frighteningly pitiful results from an organization with a $1.5 billion annual budget which is three times what it was in the late-1980’s. One would expect better results out of such a growing investment. But, alas, because of the FDA’s bureaucratic ways and bad management it’s a very poor investment. The health and safety of each and every American has been dangerously put on the back burner, trivialized by the waste that is "government".

How serious is this? Deathly serious. One shudders to think how easily bad foods could make it into the marketplace and kill not just a handful but hundreds, maybe thousands, of people. Such a nightmare can only be prevented by a major and truly immediate makeover of the FDA, one that emphasizes the safety and security of all Americans and not the job security of a bunch of paper pushing bureaucrats.