Why We Need to Fund Food and Water
Protections in the Federal Budget
Peanut butter and peppers tainted with salmonella and
E. coli-infected spinach are just some of the ubiquitous
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years. In 2010, a massive egg recall pulled more than
half a billion eggs from grocery store shelves and put
food safety squarely on the public agenda. At least 14
Americans died and many thousands became ill from
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Late last year, Congress passed comprehensive food
safety reforms that would enhance the ability of the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to inspect facilities
more regularly and issue mandatory food recalls. But
with a new year and a new Congress, essential agen-
cies and programs that oversee provision of food safety
and clean water to U.S. citizens have fallen down the
list of priorities.
In fact, the funding of key agencies that are tasked with
food safety and water infrastructure — the FDA, the
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Envi-
ronmental Protection Agency (EPA) — has come under
attack by House Republicans in an effort to reduce the
federal budget. The House is proposing to cut $88 mil-
lion from the USDA program that oversees meat inspec-
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Nearly $2 billion dollars would be cut from states’ wa-
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is not much better.
As more food is produced and imported, environmental
threats to our water resources grow, and state and local
agencies struggle to modernize aging infrastructure for
drinking water and sewage systems. It’s more important
than ever to fund these agencies adequately. Here are
some reasons why proposed cuts to the agencies and
programs that oversee our food and water resources
will harm consumers as well as local economies.
Breaking Down the Food Safety Cuts:
USDA and FDA
The House Republican proposal (the original House
Resolution 1, or H.R. 1) would cut $88 million from
the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS),
the program that is responsible for meat and poultry
inspection. Much of the FSIS budget is dedicated to
personnel; cutting this budget would lead to inspector
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USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service $1.02 billion
FDA’s food program $773 million
EPA’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund $2.1 Billion
EPA’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund $1.387 Billion
furloughs. Because meat plants cannot legally operate
without continuous government inspection, furlough-
ing meat inspectors means that meat plants must shut
down. The USDA has estimated that this cut to their
budget would have an $11 billion economic impact
due to the shutdown of meat and poultry plants, which
would have a ripple effect on local economies.1
The FDA is responsible for the safety of foods other than
meat and poultry, including fruits and vegetables, pro-
cessed foods, and shell eggs. H.R. 1 would cut the FDA
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to lay off existing employees, including inspectors and
scientists hired in the last two years. This would put the
agency even further behind in meeting requirements of
new food safety legislation signed into law earlier this
year, the Food Safety Modernization Act.
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$1.011 billion for the FSIS, a decrease of $9 million
from the current year’s budget. President Obama’s bud-
get for the FDA’s food program allocates $955 million
to food safety activities. While this is a $182 million
increase over this year’s funding, the Congressional
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quire $1.4 billion over the next four years to implement
the newly enacted food safety legislation. Unless the
administration plans to increase its requests in future
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mated it would require to implement the new law.
More to Inspect, but Fewer Inspections
Meat and poultry: The volume of poultry and meat
slaughtered in the United States is expected to increase
by more than 250 million pounds each, although the
USDA has no plans to supplement this added burden
with additional inspectors. This means that the speed
of slaughter lines will increase, as will pressure on FSIS
inspectors. The government expects that the United
States will export an additional 135 million pounds of
meat in 2012.
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$930 million $1.011 billion
$727 million $955 million
$690 million $1.55 Billion
$830 million $990 million
USDA inspectors are in slaughter plants at all times,
and in meat and poultry product processing plants at
least once a day. There are more than 7,400 inspectors
for meat and poultry, covering more than 6,200 plants
that slaughtered and/or processed 147 million head of
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USDA inspectors condemned 451 million pounds of
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2010.2
6[OLYMVVKZHUKIV[[SLK^H[LY! The FDA has nowhere
near the resources of the USDA for food safety inspec-
tion. They are responsible for so many foods, and have
so few inspectors, that an average food processing plant
under their jurisdiction gets inspected once every 10
years. The agency manages to inspect less than 2 per-
cent of imported foods under their jurisdiction.3
In 2009, Americans consumed 8.5 billion gallons of
bottled water.4 On average, the FDA has devoted ap-
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President Barack Obama is shown giving his weekly address on the importance of food
safety in March 2009. Will the federal government be able to oversee and enforce food
safety laws effectively under his new proposed budget?
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2008.5 In 2009, 128 million gallons of bottled water was
imported.6 However, the FDA’s oversight of imported
bottled water is limited. On average, according to a Gov-
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less than 1 percent of imported bottled spring or mineral
water and less than 4 percent of all imported bottled wa-
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even less was sampled for water quality testing.7
The new Food Safety Modernization Act requires the
FDA to inspect food processing plants more often (once
every three years for high-risk plants), but defunding the
FDA before the law is fully implemented will not allow
the agency to hire the inspectors needed to meet the
goals of the law.
For domestic food processing, the law sets a target of
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year 2014. To meet this target, it will need to hire about
2,000 more food safety employees than the agency
currently has. The new food safety law directs the FDA
to double its inspection of foreign food facilities that
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years. The FDA is scheduled to visit 600 foreign facili-
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law would bring the total number of foreign inspections
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The USDA has estimated that cutting their budget would have an $11 billion economic
impact due to the shutdown of meat and poultry plants, which would have a ripple
effect on local economies.
The Impact of Food Recalls and
Foodborne Illness
By mid-March 2011, more than 40 recalls were listed
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foods, dairy and produce).8 That amounts to multiple
recalls every week. While not all recalls issued are for
foods that carry the threat of foodborne illness — some
are for mislabeling or undisclosed allergens, for exam-
ple — it illustrates how often problems go undetected
until the product makes it on to the market. Usually
very little of the recalled food gets returned to the
supplier or store, and it’s unclear whether the rest gets
disposed of or eaten.
A growing trend is one recall triggering other recalls
because the affected product is used as an ingredient
in another food. For example, in the peanut product
recall of early 2009, salmonella contamination in
products from one facility led to the recall of more
than 3,000 products produced by more than 200 other
companies. And the damage is usually not limited to
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occurs, the whole industry can suffer if people start
to avoid the product altogether. One estimate of total
peanut industry losses from the 2009 recall was ap-
proximately $1 billion.9
The Centers for Disease Control estimates that each
year roughly one out of six Americans (48 million)
gets sick, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die from
foodborne diseases.10 The USDA has estimated that the
annual economic impact from just one strain of E. coli
is $478 million.11
Continuing to Fund Drinking Water and
Sanitation Infrastructure for Americans
H.R. 1 would cut $1.41 billion from the EPA’s Clean
Water State Revolving Fund and $557 million from the
Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. The State Revolv-
ing Funds are the mechanisms through which federal
funding is distributed to states and municipalities for
water infrastructure repairs, maintenance and improve-
ments for drinking water and sewer systems. These cuts
would remove nearly $2 billion from state and munici-
pal budgets costing jobs and lost worker income. The
$2 billion in cuts would lead to losing out on 54,000
jobs, as well as approximately $6 billion in lost de-
mand for products and services across the economy,
and $2.1 billion in lost household income.12

Water main breaks such as this one in 2010 in Washington, D.C., could become more
common if cuts to state and local water funding requires municipalities to further
extend the wear to our nation’s aging water infrastructure systems.
Many of our nation’s water systems that were built in
the early 20th century are reaching the end of their
lifespan. According to the EPA, 30 percent of pipes in
systems that deliver water to more than 100,000 people
are between 40 and 80 years old, and 10 percent are
more than 80 years old.13 The results of underinvest-
ment in our basic water and sewer systems are water
main breaks, water lost through leaking pipes and sew-
age spilling into waterways, all of which come at a high
cost to municipalities.
At current funding levels, 240,000 water main breaks
occur every year in the United States — nearly 700
a day. A water main break can cost from $7,000 to
$150,000 or more, depending on the size and loca-
tion.14 For example, in Boston last year, a major water
main break that forced nearly 2 million people to boil
their drinking water cost the city $527,000 to repair.15
In total, water main breaks cost the country more than
$1 billion a year and waste more than 7 billion gallons
of water a day.16
The EPA estimates there are 40,000 sewage spills a
year,17 a result of antiquated infrastructure that com-
bines raw sewage and stormwater in the same pipes and
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sustainable. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge
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homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting
citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping shared resources under public control.
Copyright © April 2011 by Food & Water Watch. All rights reserved. This issue brief can be viewed or downloaded at www.foodandwaterwatch.org.
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few thousand dollars to more than $3.5 million.18
Without dedicated federal funding through the state
revolving funds, communities simply cannot afford to
make the necessary repairs to pipes and water systems
that keep our waters clean and safe. The severe cuts
to water and wastewater infrastructure in the current
budget proposal will be detrimental to the economies
of municipalities across the country.
Conclusion
Our food and water resources are too precious not to
regulate and inspect our products and invest in clean
water. The federal government should play a role in
safeguarding access to safe food and clean water for
U.S. citizens. H.R. 1 represents drastic cuts to critical
programs that oversee our food and water — and it
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2012 is only marginally better.
Endnotes
1 Representative Norm Dicks. “Statement on Republican Budget.” February 11, 2011.
2 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service. “2012 Explanatory
Notes: Food Safety and Inspection Service.”
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FOODS, page 75.


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<:.V]LYUTLU[(JJV\U[HIPSP[`6MÄJL¸)V[[SLK>H[LY!-+(:HML[`HUK*VUZ\TLY
Protections are Often Less Stringent than Comparable EPA Protections for Tap Water.”
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<:.V]LYUTLU[(JJV\U[HIPSP[`6MÄJL¸)V[[SLK>H[LY!-+(:HML[`HUK*VUZ\TLY
Protections are Often Less Stringent than Comparable EPA Protections for Tap Water.”
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8 Food and Drug Administration. “Recalls, Market Withdrawals, & Safety Alerts.” Ac-
cessed March 21, 2010. http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/default.htm
 +VLYPUN*OYPZ[VWLY¸7LHU\[YLJHSSOH]PUNIPNPTWHJ[VUZTHSSÄYTZ¹Reuters. March
11, 2009.
10 Centers for Disease Control. “CDC 2011 Estimates: Findings.” 2011. http://www.cdc.
gov/foodborneburden/2011-foodborne-estimates.html
11 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. “Foodborne Illness Cost
Calculator.” 2010. http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/foodborneillness/
12 National Utility Contractors Association. [Press Release]. “New CWC Report Demon-
strates Immediate Economic Impact of Water/Wastewater Infrastructure Investment?”
1HU\HY` 
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¸+PZ[YPI\[PVU:`Z[LT0U]LU[VY`0U[LNYP[`HUK>H[LY8\HSP[`¹1HU\HY`
 @LSSPU+LLUH¸5VY[O1LYZL`»ZHNPUN^H[LYWPWLZWVZLJVZ[S`KPSLTTH¹The Record.
March 20, 2011.
15 Finucane, Martin. “MWRA says water main break repairs have cost $572,000. Boston
Globe. May 26, 2010.
16 “Report Card for American Infrastructure: Drinking Water 2009.” American Society of
Civil Engineers.
17 Duncan, Heather. “ EPA mulls new sewage spill rules; cutomers’ rates could go up.
Macon.com. Aug 7, 2010.
18 Maass, Dave. “Fun with numbers.” San Diego City Beat. March 23, 2010.