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WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration is relying more often on states to inspect food plants but is failing to properly monitor those state inspections or follow through on their findings, the Department of Health and Human Services watchdog has concluded.
In a report released Wednesday, the department’s inspector general found that a lack of resources is forcing the FDA to lean more heavily on its counterparts at the state level to inspect plants responsible for everything from packing to processing foods. More than half the agency’s inspections were done by state officials in fiscal 2009, up from 42 percent four years earlier, according to the report.
