FDA plans to post inspectors throughout developing world

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration intends to post inspectors to embassies and consulates throughout the developing world in hopes of improving the quality of food and medicines increasingly flowing to the United States, a top official said Thursday.

The agency's commissioner, Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach, said he wanted "boots on the ground" in nations like India and China and regions like Central and South America and the Middle East.

The agency already sends inspectors to dozens of countries each year to inspect pharmaceutical plants and clinical trial sites. But von Eschenbach said in a briefing with reporters that he wanted the agency's presence abroad to be on an "ongoing and continuous basis rather than episodic and periodic."

The inspectors would primarily "build capacity and bring others in to do inspections that are certified," von Eschenbach said.

The agency has long helped to train foreign food and drug inspectors and even advise in the writing of legislation to empower foreign versions of the FDA.

As recently as 1999, health regulators in Canada and Australia did not have authority to inspect clinical trial sites, said Dr. David Lepay, a senior adviser for clinical science at the agency. "So much of our work has been trying to get authorities that can do something legally in their own countries and develop laws and regulations and put them in place," he said.

In recent years, as more food and drugs have been produced abroad for sale in America, the FDA has been less able to ensure the products' safety. The agency inspects less than 1 percent of imported foods.

Some on Capitol Hill have called for a large increase in the agency's budget to improve such inspections. The Bush administration, however, has not endorsed those calls. Instead, FDA officials have sought to bolster the aggressiveness and effectiveness of foreign health regulators, hoping to prevent unsafe items from being brought to American docks in the first place.