How USDA and FDA Split Food-Safety Regulation

Americans often assume a single agency keeps food safe. In fact, federal food-safety authority is divided between two of them, under different statutes, with different inspection models and different congressional committees overseeing each. For anyone following food policy — or lobbying on it — knowing which agency owns a given product is the first step, because it determines which rules, which comment dockets, and which committees actually matter.

What USDA's FSIS regulates

The Food Safety and Inspection Service, part of USDA, regulates meat from the livestock species named in the Federal Meat Inspection Act (cattle, swine, sheep, and goats) — and, under that same Act, fish of the order Siluriformes such as catfish — poultry under the Poultry Products Inspection Act, and processed egg products under the Egg Products Inspection Act. FSIS uses a continuous-inspection model: for these products, a federal inspector is present in the plant during operations, and products carry a USDA mark of inspection.

What FDA regulates

The FDA oversees essentially all other food in the U.S. food supply — produce, seafood other than Siluriformes, dairy, packaged and processed foods, dietary supplements, bottled water, and food additives — under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. FDA's model is different from FSIS's continuous inspection: it is largely a preventive and risk-based system, substantially reshaped by the 2011 FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which shifted the agency's focus from responding to contamination toward preventing it.

Where the line gets strange

Because so many products contain a little meat, the agencies split jurisdiction using content thresholds. As a general matter, a product is regulated by FDA when it contains only a small proportion of meat — roughly 3% or less raw meat, less than 2% cooked meat, or 30% or less fat, tallow, or meat extract — and by USDA above those levels. That's why some frozen meals answer to one agency while near-identical ones answer to the other. Sandwiches add a separate jurisdictional wrinkle: open-face meat or poultry sandwiches generally fall under USDA/FSIS, while closed-face sandwiches generally fall under FDA. 'Non-amenable' meats not covered by the meat and poultry statutes — such as bison, venison, and rabbit — generally fall to FDA as well.

Why the split matters

A company that makes both a pepperoni pizza and a cheese pizza can be inspected by USDA for one line and FDA for the other, in the same facility. More importantly for policy, the two systems are authorized by different laws, funded through different appropriations, and overseen by different committees — the Agriculture committees for USDA, and the Energy and Commerce / HELP committees for FDA. A change to food-safety policy therefore usually has two separate tracks, and which one a proposal travels determines who has to be engaged.