Cyclospora outbreak followed years of declining FDA foreign inspections

WASHINGTON (AP) — A nationwide outbreak of cyclospora tied to contaminated lettuce has heightened safety concerns about imported food, while underscoring a longer-term trend: U.S. regulators are conducting fewer international inspections to catch contaminated produce before it lands on American plates. Food and Drug Administration inspections of foreign food sites — including the Mexican farm linked to the ongoing outbreak — are down nearly 35% since 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to agency records.

The pandemic kicked off a wave of retirements and departures among FDA inspectors that continues to this day. Even before COVID-19, the agency had long failed to hit its congressionally mandated targets for international inspections. And recent staffing cuts, reorganizations and other upheavals under President Donald Trump could mean even fewer inspections in the years ahead, according to former senior FDA officials.

He added that FDA continues to do many things “very well with limited resources.” The Trump administration has proposed new approaches to stretch agency resources — including a pilot program of one-day inspections. Rogers and other officials say the abbreviated inspections are not equivalent to traditional ones, which can take a week or more to document serious problems. FDA officials have long made the case that inspections are only one tool to oversee safety.

“Inspections will never be the only way to ensure the safety of imported products given the massive volume coming into the country,” said Susan Mayne, FDA’s former food director who is now at Yale University. “That’s why FDA uses border inspections, importer inspections, sampling and other tools.” But the outbreak in iceberg lettuce has also laid bare the potential downsides of those approaches. In July, regulators were forced to retract a faulty test result that they claimed found cyclospora on a sample of Taylor Farms’ lettuce obtained at the border.

Despite the error, FDA officials say they are confident the company’s farm is the source of the diarrhea-c…