- On May 21, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) introduced a bill titled the “Study And Framework for Efficiency in Food Oversight and Organizational Design Act of 2025” or the “SAFE FOOD Act of 2025” which would direct the Secretary of Agriculture to conduct a study on the consolidation of federal agencies with a “primary role in ensuring food safety in the United States” into a single agency.
- The bill explicitly lists the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as agencies targeted for consolidation. (More realistically, the food regulatory components of FDA and the CDC would be considered for consolidation with FSIS.) FDA and CDC are within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) while FSIS is within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). FDA has broad authority to regulate food and food additives under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, while USDA-FSIS regulates meat, poultry, and egg products under the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the Poultry Products Inspection Act, and the Egg Products Inspection Act. CDC, in collaboration with FDA and other partners, plays a critical role in responding to foodborne illness outbreaks.
- Senator Cotton claimed that spreading food safety oversight “across multiple federal, state, and local agencies . . . decreases efficacy, creates gaps, and slows response times to potential public health risks” and that his bill “is a commonsense step to expanding government efficiency and enhancing public health protection by unifying our food safety agencies.” As readers likely know, this is not the first time a single food agency has been considered. It probably will not be the last time either.
