Food companies FDA criticized by Congress over food safety.

With grocery stores pulling tons of tainted meat out of their freezers, a food industry spokesman last week urged Congress to radically strengthen food regulators' powers. The Associated Press reports that the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee for Oversight put food companies in the hot seat last week, a little over 7 days after the largest meat recall in U.S. history.

Grocery Manufacturers Association Vice President Robert Brackett chided both the Bush administration and Congress for not giving FDA more funding to inspect food safety at company plants. "Because FDA food-related funding has not kept pace with inflation, more than 800 scientists, inspectors and other critical staff have been lost in the past four years," said Brackett, who served as director the agency's food safety director until last year. In an unusual move for an industry spokesman, Brackett also urged Congress to give FDA the authority to order a company to recall tainted food if the company does not volunteer. Currently the agency works with producers to organize voluntary recalls.

FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach is under fire from an array of critics who say his agency isn't up to the job of regulating more than a fifth of the consumer goods sold in America. Now, von Eschenbach says the critics have a point: The agency needs more money than the Bush administration has proposed, and it requires a revamped organization to better oversee drug safety and other issues.

The FDA's leader, in an unusual public departure from Bush administration policy, says in an interview that he requested more than the 2.95 percent increase in overall agency appropriations proposed in the president's 2009 budget, though he declines to discuss specific figures. An outside advisory panel yesterday suggested the agency needs about 150 percent added to its appropriated base budget, phased in over five years, to cope with challenges such as inspecting a rising tide of imports.