Food safety inspectors furloughed during the federal government shutdown will be returning to work beginning Tuesday — but still without pay — so that the Food and Drug Administration can begin to resume inspections of some high-risk foods at manufacturing and other processing plants, the agency’s commissioner said on Monday.
Food inspections — about 160 of which are conducted a week — have been halted since the federal government shut down and about 40 percent of the F.D.A.’s work force was furloughed.
But Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the agency’s commissioner, said that he was asking employees to return from furlough to conduct some of the inspections and other agency functions involving surveillance of certain drugs, devices and potential outbreaks of food-borne illnesses.
About one-third of all food safety inspections are for high-risk foods, he said. It was unclear when more routine inspections would resume.
In an interview, Dr. Gottlieb said he hoped several hundred workers — not just food inspectors but also other employees — would return despite being unpaid. “I can’t tell you that they are not feeling personal hardship, but they are dedicated and want to come back,” he said.
The Agriculture Department oversees meat and poultry, and its workers have continued inspections without pay. The F.D.A. oversees about 80 percent of the nation’s food supply, as well as imports of foods shipped to the United States.
In a series of tweets, Dr. Gottlieb said the agency began sampling some high-risk imported produce in the Northeast on Monday. He said workers would begin inspections as early as Tuesday at sites with food considered “high risk” soft cheeses, seafood, custard-filled bakery products, some fruits and vegetables or baby formula.
While there are an estimated 80,000 food plants in the United States, the F.D.A. inspects about one-tenth of those in a year, according to various reports.
Dr. Gottlieb said that few inspections had been conducted since the shutdown began Dec. 22 because of the holidays, and only a handful had been scheduled for last week so the shutdown had not affected that many visits by inspectors.
But as the shutdown wore on, he sought and received permission late last week from the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House to call the furloughed workers back.
Other monitoring — including of high-risk medical products like compound drugs and problem devices — may resume next week, Dr. Gottlieb said.
Source : Nytimes
