FDA Struggles With Audit Goals

By Fred Brown

Editor, Pipe Smokers Intelligencer

Here is an item that should be of interest to all “users of tobacco” who are facing Armageddon with H.R. 1256, better known as the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act that is on the table of the 111th Congress.

The May 7 edition of USA Today had this headline: “FDA Not Meeting Its Audit Goals.”  The subhead says, “Checks of food-safety inspections fall short.”

The first paragraph of the story by Julie Schmit reads: “The Food and Drug Administration is failing to meet its goals for auditing food-safety inspections that states do on its behalf, FDA data shows.”

Oh, yeah. The FDA can’t handle what’s on its plate now, and H.R. 1256 adds the whole enchilada of tobacco in addition to what the agency has now.

And, of course, your pols in Washington, behind the lead of U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., are falling in line on the move to stop mainly cigarette smokers, but the bill is also quite far-reaching, giving FDA a wide-range of authority to govern not only tobacco in cigarettes, but “all tobacco products.”

You should read the entire bill to understand what is confronting pipe smokers, or any users of tobacco, period. You can find the bill at govtrack.us. Or, you can take a look at all “four” bills of H.R. 1256 at Thomas at the Library of Congress.

And just to really put the nail into the wood, so-to-speak, go to the Congressional Budget Office Director’s Blog. Then check out the CBO’s cost estimate of H.R. 1256 here.

I will have more on these two items in another essay/opinion.

To understand precisely what is on the table, pipe smokers and cigar smokers had best get a firm intellectual grip on this legislation. It is menacing for the future of pipe tobacco, cigar tobacco and, of course, cigarette tobacco. The giant Philip Morris USA supports H.R. 1256. You can find the company’s response here.

That’s a big, “duh,” of course. Sure, PM backs the bill. It has already sucked up a majority of the tobacco market, has lobbyists working the halls of congress full-time, and has already worked its deals. You got to ask yourself, “Why does PM back this bill?”

“Specifically, PM USA supports H.R. 1256, the Family

Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act,

introduced by Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA).”

That is how Philip Morris signed off on the bill. Look it up for yourself on the link provided.

Now, back to the FDA and USA Today. The story went on to say that the FDA was unable to meet its inspection goals in 17 of 39 states it paid for the inspections in 2007-2008. In five of those states, the FDA did no audit at all!

The year (2006-2007) before, the FDA failed to get audits in 21 of 37 states, according to USA Today’s story. Eight states were left unaudited. Going back to 1998, USA Today found that no FDA audits were conducted in 21 of 38 states.

This year, you will recall, that the FDA failed to pick up on the peanut butter salmonella outbreak, traced to Peanut Corp. of America’s plant in Georgia through a paid inspection lapse.

Your tax dollars aren’t working well at FDA.

Quoting from the USA Today story, here are other findings by the reporter: “Major food-borne outbreaks absorb so many FDA and state staffers that audits get skipped. . .

“. . . Each FDA district office will soon have a person dedicated to overseeing state contracts. . . .Eventually, the FDA intends to have states audit themselves while it checks their overall inspection programs.”

In other words, the FDA is stretched to the limit now. Adding the FSPATCA to an already overburdened federal agency will not only increase costs to the taxpayer (more on that later as well), but it will also add another layer of bureaucracy to the picture. That means more of your tax dollars going to FDA for FSLPATCA enforcement.

And, yes, there is an enforcement section in the big bill.

By allowing the states to conduct audits, the FDA is putting the snake in the chicken house. It is very easy for states to dribble out inspections, while sending taxpayers the bill.

If you have not already read H.R. 1256, the latest bill in the hopper, you need to do so immediately.

And then contact your congressman or senator and ask them not only where they stand on the issue, how they intend to vote and ask them to vote against this wide-ranging bill. Or, at least work to get something more reasonable and palatable for taxpayers who do not want the federal government telling legislating social reform dressed in the gowns of Prohibition.

Remember, this bill is aimed at “cigarette” smokers. Down the road, it will engulf “all tobacco products.” If pipe smokers fail to act now, you best be hoarding all the tobacco you can find.

For the tobacco industry, its jobs, its tax revenues, are on the way out of existence.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 8:59 am and is filed under Commentary, News, Opinions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.