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House Committee Investigates Suspicions About Private Labs

By Pritzker | Ruohonen

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has launched an investigation into the practices of private laboratories and their effectiveness in reporting to the FDA.  The FDA has Import Alert rules which allow importers to use private labs to test their product before entering the U.S. marketplace.  It is the lab’s responsibility to report any failing test results to the FDA so that dangerous products do not reach consumers.  The Committee suspects that more often than not, importers pressure the private companies into retesting bad samples until the products pass the test or not notifying the FDA of test results.

The Committee also discovered during a hearing that some importers shop around for laboratories that will make sure a clean result is obtained. In response to these practices, the Committee sent a letter to ten different lab companies requesting information.  In response to the practices, the Committee wrote that “This repeated testing is done without alerting FDA that potentially dangerous food has been imported into this country—a practice which we find deplorable.” We are inclined to agree.

The Committee’s letter requested the following information from the companies:

• The number of samples tested in the last six years that were under Import Alert.
• The number of failed test results found in the last six years.
• For the failed test results, all information relating to the importer, the product, the reason for the result, and whether or not the FDA was notified.
• All records relating to failed test results.

The Chicago Tribune reports that only two of the ten companies have complied with the House Committee’s request. Dr. David Acheson, the FDA’s assistant commissioner for food protection, says that keeping the private labs honest is difficult because the labs are not part of the FDA.  The labs do not work for the FDA but work for the importers, and often choose to follow the importer’s wishes rather than the FDA’s. Acheson also suggests a possible solution by having Congress allow the FDA to accredit private labs so that they could have more control over their test results and records.

Obviously, something has to be done to resolve this problem.  At the very least, FDA accreditation should be allowed, and that should be done with the understanding that other solutions may be required.  FDA accreditation may be totally ineffectual, particularly if there is not enough FDA oversight of the private labs.

Full post as published by Food Poisoning Law Blog on June 02, 2008 (boomark / email).