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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
Media Inquiries: 301-827-6242 |
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today issued the following statement:
The headline of a story on the risk of illness from food, “Food Attack Likely, FDA Says” that ran under “Washington in Brief” in the October 11th Washington Post mischaracterizes the FDA report.
FDA prepared this qualitative risk assessment to accompany two new final rules, published October 10th, to improve food safety and security. It discusses both unintentional and intentional contamination of the food supply, because the goals of food safety and security are closely linked.
In drafting the risk assessment FDA relied heavily on the regular occurrence of foodborne illness outbreaks from accidental contamination in reaching the “high likelihood” prediction. The FDA report did not say there is a high likelihood of a terrorist attack in the next year. It did say there is a high likelihood of a significant foodborne illness outbreak in the next year (as there is every year) and that one possibility is that the outbreak would come from a terrorist attack. The actual “likelihood” of a significant terrorist attack on the food supply in the next year is difficult to quantify precisely.
Finally, the report is not “declassified” as the article asserts. FDA compiled the report, which was never classified, from the open literature.
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