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The House vote is in: nine private labs will be subpoenaed for food testing records as part of a congressional investigation into allegations that some companies have withheld information on tainted food from federal regulators, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The subcommittee in May asked 10 labs for records dating back to 2002, but just one, in Miami, complied. The other labs, according to the subcommittee, refused to turn over records, arguing that the documents belong to their clients, food importing companies.
The Tribune reports that the Government Accountability Office has made 21 recommendations to the FDA regarding food safety since 2004 but that only three have been adopted. The Bush administration allocated $620 million for food protection programs in 2008, according to the GAO. Only about $42 million of that went to the new food-protection plan. Earlier this week, the administration asked Congress for an additional $275 million for food safety.
Meanwhile, as the House was voting on the subpoena issue, the FDA still hasn’t pinpointed the cause of the tomato salmonella outbreak which has sickened hundreds of folks nationwide.
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