Formula for Disaster: The U.S.’s Food Regulatory Failings Open the Door to Future Crises

Empty store shelves have plagued American parents trying to feed their infants. Photo by John Crowley.

Food policy has rarely been at the forefront of the minds of U.S. policymakers. For decades, food has taken a backseat to other issues considered more pertinent to U.S. interests with the food industry being allowed to largely regulate itself. This has created a system of neglect that has allowed for various failures in the nation’s food supply. Despite public outcry following these failures, there has not been an attempt to bring forth meaningful change to food regulatory structures. This history of neglecting food policy by the U.S., however, is increasingly coming to a head. Decades of inadequate regulation and poor planning have created a system in need of reform, especially in the face of global crises ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to the rise of climate change.

American food policy and regulation have their origins in the Progressive Era. Journalists like Upton Sinclair released various exposés on the food and drug manufacturing industries, and the blatant lies and dangers they offloaded onto the American people. These reports fueled intense public outcry that prompted Congress to pass the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906. This act empowered the Bureau of Chemistry, the predecessor to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with vast regulatory authority. Yet, this brief glimmer of hope was quickly cut short by a series of court cases that limited regulators authority. This necessitated the passage of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, which further empowered the FDA with regulatory powers and continues to serve as the bedrock legislation for much of the agency’s authority.

These pieces of legislation collectively formed the modern agency known today, vesting it with broad authority to regulate everything from the cosmetics on people’s faces to the chicken on their table. The FDA moved quickly to begin reining the various industries it had authority over, including food, and began setting out various standards for essential products such as medicine. However, the vast scope of the newly empowered FDA proved to be the first signs of the failure of food policy, as regulators’ eyes were quickly drawn away from food and instead began to look towards the many other policy areas the agency had authority over. Pharmaceuticals, especially, proved to be an area of vital importance for the agency’s senior leadership who were, and still are, composed primarily of medical professionals.

At the same time, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which the FDA at the time was organized under, was forced to shift its work towards employment efforts during the Great Depression, while also trying to help feed the American people. These early actions established the culture of regulatory inaction on food policy by the U.S. government—a culture that was further imbued by the reorganization of the FDA out of the USDA and into the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the forerunner to the modern Department of Health and Human Services. This moment presented a fundamental split in U.S. food policy as nutritional standards, farm quality, and rural development fell under the purview of the USDA, while manufacturers of packaged food were under the regulatory purview of the FDA.

As a result of the split, a unique situation was imposed on the American populace:  various parts of their family dinners fell under the umbrella of different federal departments. Thanksgiving Day turkeys were regulated by the USDA whilst the accompanying cranberry sauce was regulated by the FDA, exponentially increasing the complexities of food regulatory affairs. Both the FDA and the USDA were now tasked to maintain food quality, set nutritional standards, and lead the charge in various emergencies. Yet, this split had a catastrophic consequence in punting food policy out of the eyes of both major regulatory agencies, whose focus was quickly subsumed by their various other responsibilities.

In the decades since, the FDA’s attention has continued its historical focus on drug policy, with every single leader of the agency coming from the medical field. During this same time period, the agency has become famous across the political sphere for its abysmally slow response to food regulatory issues. With few budgetary resources for the Center of Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, the arm of the FDA that is supposed to manage food policy, has been unable to hire new staff or move forward on new initiatives to remove chemical and heavy metal contaminants in food products, implement new nutritional goals, and meet its required deadlines. From updating industry standards to quickly recalling bad food, the agency has not responded to the challenges of the food industry in a timely manner. This is not to say that funds earmarked for regulating the medical industry should be shifted to food initiatives. However, the combination of this huge responsibility with an equally large food regulatory mandate has made it easy for many of the top leaders in the agency to be unacquainted with the field, especially as the higher authority figures for the agency play no role in food policy.

The impact of this split has also had a long-standing effect on the USDA, as it grew unfocused in regulating food and nutrition policy. Since its conception, the USDA has served as an outreach vehicle for presidents to curry favor with rural America, with President Abraham Lincoln referring to the agency as “The People’s Department” when he authorized its creation. The department was envisioned to carry an advocacy role for rural America and to the farmer class that made up most of the nation. Most of the agency’s executives have come from backgrounds in line with that vision, with most having a history of serving as governors of rural states or representatives of farm-heavy congressional districts. This has occurred even though the largest policy initiatives within the USDA’s umbrella are the Food and Nutrition Service and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps. Programs such as food stamps have an impact far beyond rural America with impacts across the country, especially in urban communities. With the appointment of executives from rural regions, the USDA has largely approached policy making from the perspective of farmers and not necessarily from the viewpoint of food. Though it is important that the Secretary of Agriculture have experience in understanding the farming and agricultural worlds, this does not immediately mean that the agency heads have had translatable experience in food policy as a whole that the USDA is responsible for. This has allowed for absurd situations such as the considered resignation of Secretary Tom Vilsack in 2015 who stated “there are days when I have literally nothing to do.” His apathy for the role and open musings of resigning were followed by President Obama tasking him with oversight of the opioid crisis. All of this is in spite of the fact that rapid technological development and new farm practices have allowed for a rise in the need for food recalls and quality issues, and that the rise of food deserts, areas without access to healthy food and produce, across the nation have left vast swaths of people without access to healthy, nutritious food and produce. 

The FDA and USDA’s drift away from regulating and managing food policy has created a tragic status quo of food regulation as a trivial and distant issue. The failures of both agencies have resulted in decades of damaging food recalls and contamination disasters. In the past decade alone, there have been near constant occurrences of food recalls from romaine lettuce to meat products, due to lax regulation by the relevant authorities. This year, in particular, has seen especially catastrophic consequences with the nationwide shortage of baby formula. For months, store shelves are bare as parents across the nation scrambled to find essential food for their children. This crisis had a variety of factors that played into its scale, but a vast amount of blame lands at the feet of the FDA. For years, the agency had allowed formula manufacturers to self-report any issues. This lax regulatory structure was the catalyst for the plant to release contaminated products into the market, resulting in the death of several babies. For months, the regulator continued to let Abbott, a major baby formula manufacturer, put contaminated formula onto the market, until it was finally forced to shut down the plant creating the shortage—a shortage that could have been avoided by preemptive regulatory action by the FDA to maintain health standards at formula factories. Even after the scale of the crisis was known and the FDA shifted its full focus to the shortage, the regulator appointed to lead the charge, Deputy FDA Administrator Janet Woodcock, continued the image of an agency that was not prepared to handle food crises. Having no previous experience in food policy, her appointment prompts larger questions on the U.S.’s ability to reliably respond to food crises, especially if its regulators lack prerequisite experience in the policy areas that they administer.  

The nation is still feeling the effects of the shortage months later—even after the federal government implemented the Defense Production Act and brought in shipments of formula from Europe. As the world continues to grow increasingly unstable from the rise of authoritarian politics and the impacts of climate change disrupting the global way of life, the risk of famine and food insecurity has risen and will continue to rise even in the developed world. Over 300 million people in this year alone are being pushed into acute hunger, and at least another 50 million are on the verge of famine, according to UN World Food Program Director David Beasely. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the developed world, with the USDA’s most recent estimates from 2020 placing food insecurity rates around 10.7 percent, or about 38.3 million people, and 13.5 million people living in food deserts. The failures ofregulatory agencies to properly maintain the quality of food sold to the nation only add fuel to an increasingly dangerous situation. The possibility of global supply chains inability to make up for preventable food shortages in the U.S. could grow into a greater possibility, in both the short and long term.

When President Biden came into office, there existed a glimmer of change in this reality, as Congresswoman Marcia Fudge of Ohio  was placed in contention for leading the USDA. Fudge’s pitch to the President centered on her long-time experience in food policymaking, from her time working in the House on the issues of nutrition and food. She presented a meaningful push to place food policy and not just outreach to rural voters at the table, and led an agenda focused on securing the nation’s food supply and pursuing adequate nutritional standards. Yet, she did not receive the job, and lost to former Secretary Tom Vilsack. His appointment reinforces the deeper structural issues of food policy in the U.S., as it has constantly been reaffirmed and led by a group of overworked regulators and political appointees unwilling to push food policy to the top of the agenda.

To improve the current state of food policy in America, change must come to the federal approach, starting with the regulatory structures meant to administer food policy. The continued existence of an agency responsible for overseeing both the food and pharmaceutical industry is nonsensical and has resulted in a labyrinthine system of standards that allowed for the baby formula shortage. The first step needs to be the formal removal of all food oversight from the FDA and handed to the USDA. This needs to be followed by a reorganization of the USDA to acknowledge its massive role in food policy as the U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture. It would allow for streamlined food regulation from farm to factory, and create a more direct advocacy system for food policy at the cabinet level. However, this would be just a first step in improving the U.S. approach to food policy and cannot be the only move made, especially as global instability continues to rise.

Karun Parek is a junior editor and summer staff writer for CPR. He is a rising junior studying Political Science, Economics, and History. You can find him wandering across New York looking for the best coffee and talking about the need for better public transit in America. He is from Crossville, Tennessee.