A Safety Net of Broken Strings: The FDA's Inspection Conundrum The cyclospora outbreak tied to contaminated iceberg lettuce has shed light on a deeply ingrained issue in our food safety system: the steady decline of foreign inspections by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
This trend is alarming, with inspection numbers dwindling significantly since 2019. The FDA's own records show that foreign food inspections have decreased by nearly 35% since then.
The pandemic led to a wave of retirements and departures among inspectors in 2019, exacerbating the agency's existing struggles to meet its congressionally mandated targets for international inspections.