The recall Monday of more than 125,000 bottles of Tylenol is another reminder that U.S. drug and food safety controls remain inadequate. That’s been the case for years. Despite a growing number of incidents that put public health at risk, there’s been little progress in expanding the Food and Drug Administration’s enforcement power or in strengthening the nation’s food and drug-safety regulations. That doesn’t make sense. If controls and enforcement aren’t improved, the threat to Americans’ health and safety will continue to increase.
While the Monday recall of 50-count bottles of eight-hour Tylenol caplets because of a musty or moldy order is relatively small, it is part of an alarming growth pattern. Earlier this year, the McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit of Johnson & Johnson, producers of the Tylenol pulled from shelves on Monday, recalled more than 150 million units of Tylenol, Motrin, Benadryl and Zyrtec for adults, children and infants. Clearly, the problem of tainted drugs and foodstuffs is not a new one.
The Tylenol recall isn’t the only current reminder about the state of food and drug safety in the country. On Monday, the FDA reported that it would allow Hillandale Farms, one of the two Iowa producers linked to more than 1,600 reported cases of salmonella illnesses and the recall of more than 500 million eggs earlier this year, to resume shipping product to stores. The FDA noted that it had passed recent inspections and had adequately dealt with the problems that prompted the massive recall.
The same is not true of Wright County Eggs, the other Iowa facility involved in the egg recall. It obviously has failed to meet current standards. Indeed, an FDA letter to the Wright County Egg owner said that if the farms do not take “prompt and aggressive actions” to eliminate salmonella from his farms, the FDA might shut down his company. Whether the threat is taken seriously remains to be seen. Similar warnings earlier in the year failed to prompt remedial action.
Drugs and eggs aren’t the only items that have posed threats to consumer safety in recent years. Beef, chicken, peanuts, peppers, cantaloupe, tomatoes and spinach have all been implicated in widespread illnesses and a number of deaths. Improvements in the current system clearly re needed.
Some progress is being made. The FDA is working on several fronts to increase its efficiency and efficacy. It has a blueprint for modernization that should help it keep abreast of the evolving science behind the newest drugs, medical devices and foods. Those are steps in the right direction, but they are not enough to overcome the political and financial roadblocks that continue to beset the FDA.
Congress has failed to fully fund FDA budget requests for years. Discussions about increased funding and enhanced enforcement powers for the FDA have become political hostages. The remedy, of course, is agreement that protecting public health from tainted food and drugs is far more important than scoring partisan political points. Until that occurs public concern about the safety of the nation’s medicines and food supply will remain.