Document EdL0dOB5Znpp0ZDkxD6NB0yZL

v,;r;;;v] own. n. y, . kcivs (nmvyobk emr mm mt) (--s AUG 14 1971 FDA Denied Hut this w<vk, niter nearly Mure weeks of the voluntary recall action, the FPA decided that It had to do the Job iti-oH. Its lirat step was to send a federal marshal to4he Bronx, N.Y.. warehouse of Dcrkln Brothers Inc. to arlzo 45.000 cans of Ho<> Vivant soups and empower ByMMSmCKUNG / Csanolt News Service. WASlilNGTON -- In npfoe of successive scares from mercury In fifth, dangerous chcm. leal* In chicken nnd eggs and biological poi- *ont In canned soup, (he.White House will not let the food and druj administration beef up its field inspection force. Dr. Qiario /dward*, head ot (he FDA, would like five . six times the 250 Inspectors i he now has to handle the giant job of polictaff ; the J130 billion food Industry. Hut the While House's Office of Manage* meat and Budget would allow only enough to * hire about CO more men in the FDA budget request for 1972. It Underfinanced and undermanned, the ' agency cannot cope with crises like the one i that foUmvcd a Wc*.<heater County, N.Y., j man's death from eating canned vlchymiso ' that contained bmtillmu poison. - Every time it throws part ol Its scanty ) forces into an effort like tha current one to round up canned goods from the Bon Vivant i plant in Newark, N.J., the source of the dead* ' iy soup, it has to let hundreds of other plants go unchecked. . Edwards told a house subcommittee re* | cenlly that, because of the Bon Vivant round* < up, theirare a/ least 3,300 ofher food process ' Ing plants that will not be inspected (his JI 'Die PDA tad /toped that (lie Newark com* | pany itactf and the National Cannera AssoclaHon would help it round up the estimated an million cans of Bon Vivanl-madc products -- j marketed under more than 30 labels HONS 031773 othercaniied products, ; Other such sci/.utcjr arc expected. *`Ow final Is to nc.'ount for every single can,14 ft FDA spokesman said. Bui he admitted that H i impossible to track every last can lo a corner grocery shelf or to someone's home cupJx>ard, ' Ita FDA Friday alno seized nearly 7'00U dozen eggs and 45,000 pounds of cat/ish food -- the Ir.Ui-r intended to feed fish in ponds in the south ad southwest, where catfish grow, ing is on up and owning industry, The eggs and fnc fish feed wore fainted with Polychlorinated biphenyls, a DDT-ltke substance that leaked from the cooling system ot a Halt meal plant in Wilmington, N.C. Feed Hem the same plant was traced to a large chicken producer, Holly Farm*, recently and led to an or^cr to destroy 77,000 broilers that had been fed on it. Each time FDA staff members are pulled off their routine assignments to handle crises like the Bon Vivant one. they fail farther and farther behind on their regular Inspections, ys the agency, ineveuting the likelihood that there will be a fresh horror story from some othOernslyouArcbeo.ut 21,000 of the more than 60,000 installations subject to FDA food hrpcctior& are checked each year, at best. This year, because of the mercury in fish, the contend- Sec FDA, r*ge 2 FDA's Checks Curtailed Continued Rogers said u is t ies'* u:m i. FDA j. hated fish meal, the poisoned soup and other , "wocJully undermanned and ur...e, ,\r,anted" for the Job of protecting the A:ne. cc* , special problems, probably fewer than 9,000 sumcr, and laid Conpm \v;:: h,,ve ta t-K* I Inspool ions will be mndc. the lead In giving il whs: it needs. I Edwards told a House Subcommittee on . Meanwhile Jn a metropolitan New Ye-.,. I Public Health and the Environmenrthnt, al* hospital, Mrs. Samuel Cochran e! Bedford j though federal inspectors could never make - Village, N.Y., lies parad'd and in cr.tica! sbwiutely sum that no dntigcro'u# food Is mar* _ condition from the poison she consume,; out ot keted, he could do a pretty good job il he had ' n ran of Bon Vivant VLhyaaobc on 1.500 men in the Hold 8o- Tun Her husband, who apparently ate more of l.o would custrlre cntlmated, about >25 to $80 mil* soup, died the next day. Hon t Vcttr compared io his present budget bf UB million JOf I6od inspection. !> The Don Vivant Newark plant, the Roger* subcommittee war- told, had not teen inspect* Subcommittee Chairman Fatil Rogers, D*- cd since May, 10G7. One reason fee.* i:.-;, Fla., naked Edwards whether the Office of .since FDA Inspectors cannot inajvw every Management and Budget had put a ceiling on plant ntuch o/lenor than every ..\ > ;. Ills budget request. Edwards loyally declined try to judge which one* are ;*..>< ... . to say that he had naked for mojc money and need close atlemh-n been alapped down, but he admitted that too The Bon Vivnn on iho p budget request for 2072 -- which will permit inspections, va;m:o<i as s it.i .s. an increase of at most flnJmnarty -- was high qunHly operation that could >a.V.y worked out In conferences with OMB. ' passed over U necessary.