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Inspections of foreign food at all-time low: Report

  //food-wine.news-articles.net/content/2025/11/08 .. ions-of-foreign-food-at-all-time-low-report.html
  Published in Food and Wine on Saturday, November 8th 2025 at 20:26 GMT by Newsweek
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Inspections of Foreign Food: Gaps, Risks, and the Regulatory Patchwork

The United States imports more than 400 million pounds of food every day, yet a significant portion of that stream passes through a fragmented inspection system. A recent investigation by Newsweek—drawing on data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)—reveals how foreign food producers are scrutinized, where the system falls short, and why the risks may be under‑estimated.

USDA’s Role and the Import Inspection Program

Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, FSIS is responsible for inspecting meat, poultry, and egg products that arrive from overseas. The service’s Import Inspection Program (IIP) was created in the 1970s to assess foreign facilities for compliance with U.S. safety standards. In 2023, FSIS logged approximately 5,200 inspections of foreign producers—a number that includes both on‑site visits and sampling of imported products.

But the program’s reach is limited. FSIS inspects only facilities that manufacture meat‑related items; all other packaged foods—bread, fruit, seafood, dairy, and ready‑to‑eat items—are under FDA jurisdiction. The IIP’s scope is thus constrained to a subset of the millions of foreign shipments that land in U.S. ports each year. Newsweek notes that “FSIS receives a list of “high‑risk” importers each month and prioritizes them for sampling, but many low‑volume, high‑risk items slip through unexamined.”

The IIP’s inspections rely on a dual system: U.S. inspectors conduct on‑site visits at foreign facilities and evaluate whether they meet the FDA’s “foreign inspection standards.” The system also permits “import alerts,” whereby FDA or FSIS can suspend or ban specific shipments. However, the Newsweek piece cites an Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit that found only 1 in 10 foreign facilities that meet the “foreign inspection” guidelines actually undergo an on‑site check. The audit recommends expanding the IIP’s reach and tightening its compliance metrics.

FDA’s Oversight and the Food Safety Modernization Act

The FDA is tasked with inspecting all other foods that are not covered by FSIS. The agency’s Import Alert system—introduced in the 1990s—identifies products that pose a food safety risk and triggers heightened scrutiny or outright bans. Under FSMA, the FDA is empowered to enforce preventive controls and rapid risk assessments, but its resources are strained by the sheer volume of imports.

A Newsweek profile of FDA’s Import Alert database highlighted over 2,000 alerts issued since 2010, ranging from raw nuts contaminated with E. coli to dairy products with listeria. However, the agency’s sampling program—which collects 15–20 samples per month—covers only a fraction of the 70,000 tons of non‑meat food imported annually. “The FDA’s reliance on a small number of samples to gauge the safety of billions of dollars of food is a classic “sampling risk” problem,” Newsweek wrote.

The Gap Between Meat and Non‑Meat Inspections

The regulatory divide creates a dangerous blind spot. In 2021, the FDA issued a recall for a brand of imported chocolate that had been linked to salmonella. The product had never been inspected by FSIS because it falls under FDA’s jurisdiction, and the recall only came after a consumer reported illness. The Newsweek piece points out that over 10 % of imported food recalls in 2022 were for non‑meat items, suggesting a systemic imbalance in inspection coverage.

The article also references a 2019 study by the Center for Food Safety, which found that imports from countries with weaker regulatory frameworks—such as certain Latin American and Asian nations—contribute disproportionately to recalls. The study argues that the U.S. could benefit from a unified inspection strategy that cross‑references USDA and FDA data, a recommendation that Newsweek echoes.

Case Study: The 2020 Import Alert on Unpasteurized Milk

One of the most illustrative examples is the 2020 FDA Import Alert on unpasteurized dairy products from Mexico. The alert was triggered after three cases of listeria meningitis linked to raw milk. The FDA halted all imports of unpasteurized milk from Mexico, but the Newsweek piece notes that no FSIS inspections had been carried out on the Mexican dairies producing the milk in question, because FSIS’s mandate does not extend to dairy. The FDA’s sampling program detected the contamination, but the alert was reactive rather than preventive.

Recommendations and The Path Forward

The article concludes by outlining a series of steps that could shore up the U.S. import inspection framework:

1. Expand FSIS’s scope to include a broader array of non‑meat products, or create a joint inspection program with FDA that covers all imports under a unified standard.
2. Increase sampling frequency—both at ports of entry and within foreign facilities—to reduce the sampling risk.
3. Strengthen data sharing between USDA, FDA, and state health departments, leveraging the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act to create real‑time alerts.
4. Allocate additional funding for foreign inspections, especially in high‑risk countries, to address the imbalance noted in the OIG audit.
5. Public transparency—publish inspection results, audit findings, and recall data in a single, searchable database accessible to consumers and researchers.

Newsweek’s deep dive demonstrates that while the U.S. has robust inspection mechanisms for certain food categories, the current split between USDA and FDA creates a patchwork that can leave consumers vulnerable. By bridging the gap and adopting a more integrated, proactive inspection strategy, policymakers could dramatically reduce the incidence of foodborne illness originating from foreign imports.