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they do. calls for $1.17 billion for food safety programs in Without
The consolidation of food safety duties in a fiscal year 2016. The budget would include just
new agency under the HHS is also unlikely to under one billion dollars in government funding serious
solve another major problem with food safety, and approximately one hundred eighty million reform of the
namely the lack of experience or understanding dollars in “user fees”—government fees imposed role of Big
of the real-world conditions of growing food. on the regulated industry for the privilege of be-
The FDA’s proposed FSMA regulations demon- ing regulated. Business in
strated all too clearly that the agency’s expertise User fees can create two major problems. setting the
in laboratory science makes for extraordinarily First, they can be used to impose significant agenda for the
poor rulemaking for farms, with their complex, financial burdens on small-scale producers when
dynamic functions. HHS, FDA’s parent depart- they have done absolutely nothing in violation of government,
ment, almost certainly suffers from the same the law, but simply as a cost of being regulated. shifting from
lack of real-world experience or understanding Second, to the extent that the agency depends multiple
of farms. on user fees for its continued existence (and the
While the DeLauro-Durbin bill and the salaries of various employees), it has yet another agencies to
President’s proposal are long shots for becoming incentive to be overly cozy with the big industry a single one
law, we can expect to see a great deal of new dis- players who pay large user fees. In essence, the is highly
cussion about federal food safety in the coming regulated industry literally buys a good relation-
year. Hopefully, we can expand those discussions ship with the agency by helping to fund it. The unlikely to
to include the problems that are more fundamen- FDA’s estimate of the user fees for FY 2016 is make any
tal than simply the convoluted bureaucracy. seventeen times as much as it estimated that it substantive
will collect in FY 2015, raising significant con-
FUNDING cerns about how food safety regulation will be changes.
The budget contains another disquieting, funded in this country.
albeit less high-profile, move in federal food
safety regulation. The FDA’s proposed budget

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