Too little money to do their jobs

	HAMPERED  Two federal agencies need more money to protect consumers better.

Pretty much everyone in my household has had to forgo a favorite food recently--even our dog, Charley. Spinach, peanut butter, and dog food have all been recalled in the past several months for some type of contamination.

This raises the question as to whether the agencies charged with safeguarding our health and safety are doing as much as they should be. Consumers Union doesn’t think so, and part of the reason they aren’t is money. We’re not advocating pumping dollars into inefficient systems. But we are worried that the government bodies that stand between consumers and danger are hobbled by their budgets. Here are two agencies that don’t get enough money to do their jobs:

Consumer Product Safety Commission. The CPSC is requesting $63.3 million for the next fiscal year, a bump of $880,000. That’s a paltry amount to add to the already tight budget of the federal safety agency responsible for more than 15,000 types of consumer products.

Those products include swimming pools. Drowning is the second-biggest accidental cause of death of children ages 1 to 14. But a tight budget and staff would force the CPSC to drop its strategic goal of reducing those deaths. It will publicize drowning hazards, but “resource limitations and the limited ability to develop further technical remedies” will weaken its efforts, says the CPSC’s budget request.

The CPSC is bracing to whittle its full-time staff even further. Cuts of 51 employees in the past two fiscal years have already drained the agency of some of its deepest knowledge and left it with the smallest staff in its history: just 401 full-time staffers. We can’t afford losses like those.

Food and Drug Administration. The problem is more complex at the FDA. At first glance, the proposed increase in funding of more than 5 percent, to $2.1 billion, might seem like plenty. But it doesn’t make up for years of resource erosion or enable the FDA to fulfill its mission.

Part of that job is keeping food safe. The FDA’s 2008 budget request notes the recent foodborne outbreaks and predicts that without increased funding, there could be “difficulty in maintaining public confidence in the safety of fresh produce.” The agency requests about $10.7 million in additional funding for food safety and 15 more full-time employees. We question whether that’s anywhere near enough. A recent Associated Press analysis of FDA records found that from 2003 to 2006 the agency cut inspections of food manufacturing facilities in half. A former FDA official, William Hubbard, wrote in The Washington Post that because of the mainly flat budget, U.S. food processors are inspected on average only once every 10 years.

Money won’t fix all the problems at federal safety agencies, but it’s a start. Even if the current administration does little to encourage increased safety efforts, Congress should.