2026年8月11日 / 美国东部时间上午11:19 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）2025年仅开展了不到1000次外国食品安全检查，而被认为是美国当前环孢子虫暴发核心的墨西哥农场并未在检查名单之列。
一项旨在防止患病和不洁食品进入美国人餐盘的联邦法律要求FDA每年开展近20倍于此的外国检查。但该法律实施10年来，无论两届执政党如何更迭，FDA从未达到国会规定的目标——甚至连目标的10%都未达到。
FDA官员称这一要求不切实际，但从未要求国会修订。该机构认为保障外国进口食品安全所需的更低检查目标，仍比去年实际开展的检查数量高出近5倍。
与此同时，国会未增加FDA的食品安全预算以跟上通胀步伐，特朗普总统第二任期第一年的大规模裁员进一步压缩了资源。
受这些削减措施影响，检查率大幅下滑，2025年外国食品安全检查数量较2024年下降29%。除新冠疫情期间外，去年的检查数量是2011年以来的最低值。2026年的早期数据显示，今年的检查数量有望与去年持平。
“FDA检查确实是缓解疫情暴发的第一道防线。如果FDA不定期前往食品加工厂检查，就完全是盲目的，”美国卫生与公众服务部监察长关于FDA对美国国内工厂检查报告的主要作者梅里迪思·塞夫说道，“它无法确保这些工厂遵守法律和法规，也无法确保其加工的食品安全。”
过去十年中，FDA针对外国食品企业开展的食源性危害检查中，约有三分之一发现了违规行为，检查数据显示。此前检查员在墨西哥的种植场地发现过卫生纸和人类粪便，在中国观察到空调水滴滴落在小龙虾上。在过去十年中，约有2%的检查发现违规行为严重到足以启动执法行动。
记录显示，在此次环孢子虫暴发之前，FDA上一次检查其潜在源头墨西哥泰勒农场已是7年前。上一次检查是在那之前6年——为应对2013年的另一起环孢子虫暴发。2019年的检查未发现违规行为，而2013年暴发后的审查发现该工厂回收沙拉混合菜的洗涤水，但无法明确确定此次暴发的源头。
美国卫生与公众服务部高级新闻秘书艾米丽·希利亚德表示，FDA“正在积极努力扩大驻外人员编制”。公共卫生专家表示，检查数量只是整个食品安全体系中的一个考量因素，食品公司对日常安全负有主要责任。但他们也表示，检查数量作为监管机构能够提供的外部监督手段，仍然至关重要。
“认为FDA保护食品供应的能力可以通过单一的检查统计数据来衡量，忽视了该机构基于风险优先分配资源、将人员部署在对公共卫生影响最大的地方的全面监督体系，”希利亚德在给哥伦比亚广播公司新闻的一份声明中写道。
FDA负责检查水果和蔬菜、乳制品、加工食品以及大多数海产品的生产商，而美国农业部负责检查肉类和家禽生产商。
哥伦比亚广播公司新闻对进口数据的分析发现，去年约有4.7万家外国生产商占美国非肉类食品进口量的90%。自2023年以来，FDA仅对其中4.5%的企业进行了检查。
FDA采用基于风险的模型来确定检查员的派遣地点，依据是企业向美国出口食品的数量和频率，以及其既往检查和进口拒绝记录。除检查外，FDA还使用算法为进口货物分配分数，以便在入境口岸进行筛查，若认定托运方存在问题，可无需检查直接扣留进口货物。联邦法律还要求进口食品的美国公司确保其供应商遵守安全标准。
“不切实际”的目标
联邦数据显示，自2011年以来，联邦检查员（非疫情年份）年均访问约1300家外国工厂和农场，检查可能导致食源性疾病的危害。
根据美国卫生与公众服务部监察长的数据，近年来美国国内的FDA、州和地方机构每年开展超过1万次检查。
《食品安全现代化法案》（FSMA）设定了逐年递增的外国检查目标，2016年的上限为19200次。FDA早在2015年就向联邦监督机构表示这一数字无法实现，因此国会指示FDA向国会提出调整后的目标。该机构后来开展了内部分析，认为所需的检查数量应为4700次，约为近年来FDA实际完成数量的3至5倍。但该机构从未将这一数字提交给国会。
去年1月美国政府问责局敦促FDA重新审视这一目标后，该机构成立了工作组重新开展分析。
“政府问责局在1月份的报告中指出，该机构因资金不足和人员短缺而受限，这一说法是正确的。如今情况甚至更糟，”康涅狄格州民主党参议员理查德·布卢门撒尔说道，他要求开展此次最新的监督调查。“显然，我们需要更多资源、更好的管理和更多投入。其中一部分可以通过立法解决，但也必须来自行政部门。”
根据FDA的估算，每次外国检查平均成本为38700美元，达到国会现行规定的目标每年将花费约7.43亿美元——超过FDA entire预算的10%。
人员配备挑战
美国政府问责局的报告显示，FDA2024年有432名检查员，但其招聘速度未超过人员流失速度。根据《食品安全现代化法案》，国会指示FDA招聘5000名检查员，但该机构表示从未有足够预算实现如此大规模的人员扩招。
“十多年来，由于工作难度大，留住检查员一直是FDA面临的挑战，”负责起草FDA拨款法案的参议院拨款小组委员会主席、北达科他州共和党议员约翰·霍文在一份书面声明中写道。
去年的大规模政府裁员 spared了检查员，但削减了后勤人员编制，导致一线检查员需要自行预订机票和翻译服务。
2024年，FDA仅有少量检查员——20名——专门负责外国供应商检查，该机构经常从国内检查员队伍中抽调人员。它会派遣检查员出国数周，在一次行程中兼顾多个检查点。FDA还与加拿大、新西兰和澳大利亚达成协议，认可其食品体系和检查结果与美国等效。
“完成19200次检查对他们来说是不可能的数字，”FDA前食品与兽药事务副局长斯蒂芬·奥斯特罗夫说道，“他们非常努力地尝试寻找替代外国检查的方案。”
检查之外的措施
由于检查频率很低，“食品安全的日常运营和管理实际上落在了企业身上，而非监管机构，”罗格斯大学食品科学系主任唐·沙夫纳博士说道。
经济激励措施强化了这种自我监督：路透社报道称，此次环孢子虫暴发期间，预包装生菜的销售额在7月份下降了近20%。泰勒农场表示，其每年在食品安全协议和独立审计上投入2亿美元，包括定期监测水质和员工卫生状况。
“如果考虑到我们食用的食品数量之多，食品行业在食品安全方面总体上做得非常好，”特拉华大学微生物食品安全主席卡利·尼尔博士说道。
尽管如此，非营利组织“停止食源性疾病”首席执行官桑德拉·埃斯金表示，检查仍然是“一项关键的食品安全和消费者保护活动”。
“我们不在现场，也不在加工厂里，看不到里面发生的情况，”她说，“我们把食品带回家时，无法判断它是否受到污染。”
关于数据
哥伦比亚广播公司新闻分析了FDA数据仪表板中的检查和进口数据。本次分析仅限于针对“食源性生物危害”计划开展的美国以外企业的检查。为确定去年有多少外国生产商占美国食品进口量的90%，哥伦比亚广播公司新闻统计了向美国出口最多人类食品的外国生产商，将同一家公司在同一天交付的多种产品的运输合并为单次运输。肉类和家禽被排除在外，因为它们属于美国农业部的管辖范围，而非FDA。
约翰·凯利为本报告撰稿。
Farm linked to cyclosporiasis outbreak hadn’t been inspected in 7 years as FDA lags on foreign inspection targets
August 11, 2026 / 11:19 AM EDT / CBS News
The Food and Drug Administration conducted just under 1,000 foreign food safety inspections in 2025, and the farm in Mexico believed to be at the center of the ongoing cyclosporiasis outbreak in the U.S. was not one of them.
A federal law enacted to prevent diseased and dirty food from reaching Americans’ plates requires the FDA to carry out nearly 20 times that many foreign inspections each year. But the FDA hasn’t come close to meeting the congressional mandate — or even 10% of it — in the 10 years it has been in place, spanning administrations led by both political parties.
FDA officials have described the requirement as unrealistic, but have never asked Congress to revise it. A lower foreign inspection target the agency deemed necessary to safeguard foreign imports is still nearly five times higher than the number of inspections conducted last year.
Congress, meanwhile, has not increased the agency’s food safety budget to outpace or keep up with inflation, and widespread layoffs during the first year of President Trump’s second term squeezed resources further.
The rate of inspections has gotten markedly worse amid those reductions, with foreign food safety inspections falling by 29% from 2024. Outside of the COVID-19 pandemic, last year’s inspection count was the lowest since 2011. Early numbers for 2026 show that the agency is on track to inspect a similar number this year.
“FDA inspections really are the first line of defense for mitigating outbreaks. If FDA isn’t routinely going out to food facilities, it’s just completely blind,” said Meridith Seife, the lead author on a Health and Human Services Inspector General report on FDA inspections of U.S. facilities. “It’s unable to ensure that those facilities are complying with the laws, with regulations, and that the food that they handle is safe.”
About a third of FDA inspections of foreign firms for foodborne hazards over the last decade found violations, inspection data show. Inspectors have previously found toilet paper and human feces in growing fields in Mexico and observed air conditioning units dripping onto crawfish in China. Around 2% of the time inspectors visited firms over the last 10 years, they found violations significant enough to prompt enforcement action.
Before the cyclosporiasis outbreak, the FDA last inspected its potential source, Taylor Farms de Mexico, seven years ago, records show. The FDA’s last visit before that was six years prior — to respond to another cyclosporiasis outbreak in 2013. The 2019 inspection found no violations, while the 2013 post-outbreak review found the facility was recycling wash water for salad mix, but couldn’t conclusively pinpoint the source of the outbreak.
The FDA is “actively working to expand staffing at foreign posts,” according to Emily Hilliard, senior press secretary for HHS. Public health experts say the inspection count is only one input in the whole system, and that food companies bear primary responsibility for day-to-day safety. But they also said the count still matters as an outside check regulators alone can provide.
“Suggesting that FDA’s ability to protect the food supply can be measured by a single inspection statistic ignores the agency’s comprehensive oversight system, which prioritizes resources based on risk and deploys personnel where they have the greatest public health impact,” Hilliard wrote in a statement to CBS News.
The FDA inspects producers of fruits and vegetables, dairy, processed foods and most seafood, while the U.S. Department of Agriculture is responsible for inspections of meat and poultry producers.
About 47,000 foreign manufacturers accounted for 90% of non-meat food shipments into the U.S. last year, a CBS News analysis of import data found. The FDA has inspected 4.5% of them since 2023.
The FDA employs a risk-based model to determine where to send inspectors, based on how much and how often a company sends food into the U.S. and its prior inspection and import refusal record. In addition to inspections, the FDA also uses an algorithm to assign scores to imports for screening at ports of entry, and can block any imports without examining them if they deem a shipper problematic. Federal law also puts the burden on U.S. companies importing food to ensure their suppliers follow safety standards.
An “unrealistic” target
Since 2011, federal inspectors have visited an average of about 1,300 foreign factories and farms annually (in non-pandemic years) to check for hazards that could lead to foodborne illness, federal data shows.
The FDA, state and local agencies conducted more than 10,000 inspections annually inside the U.S. in recent years, according to the HHS Inspector General.
The Food Safety Modernization Act, or FSMA, set a rising annual target for foreign inspections, capping it at 19,200 in 2016. The FDA told a federal watchdog as early as 2015 that the number was unworkable, so it directed the FDA to propose an adjusted target to Congress. The agency later conducted an internal analysis pegging the needed number of inspections at 4,700, about three to five times what the FDA has managed in recent years. But the agency never brought the number to Congress.
After the Government Accountability Office urged the FDA to revisit the target again last January, the agency created a workgroup to redo the analysis.
“The GAO was right in its January report when it said that the agency is handicapped by underfunding and understaffing. It’s even more so now,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat of Connecticut, who requested the more recent watchdog inquiry. “There’s clearly a need for more resources, better management, more commitment. Some of it can be legislated, but it also has to come from the administration.”
At an average of $38,700 per foreign inspection, according to the FDA’s estimates, meeting the existing Congressional mandate would cost about $743 million a year — more than 10% of the FDA’s entire budget.
Staffing challenges
The FDA had 432 inspectors in 2024, and its hiring rate has not outpaced losses, according to the GAO report. Congress directed the hiring of 5,000 inspectors under FSMA, but the agency says it has never had the budget to increase staffing that much.
“Retaining inspectors has been a challenge at the FDA for more than a decade due to the difficulty of the job,” wrote Sen. John Hoeven, a Republican of North Dakota, chair of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that drafts funding legislation for the FDA, in a written statement.
Last year’s mass government layoffs spared inspectors but slashed support staff, leaving front-line inspectors to book their own flights and translators.
With just a fraction of its inspectors — 20 in 2024 — dedicated to foreign providers, the agency often pulls from domestic inspector ranks. It sends inspectors overseas for weeks to combine multiple stops in one trip. The FDA has also worked out agreements with Canada, New Zealand and Australia to accept their food systems and inspection results as equivalent to the U.S.
The required 19,200 inspections “was an impossible number for them to meet,” said Stephen Ostroff, former FDA deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine. “They have worked very hard to try to come up with alternatives to doing those foreign inspections.”
Beyond inspections
With inspections happening infrequently, “the day-to-day operations and management of food safety is really on the company rather than on the regulatory agency,” said Dr. Don Schaffner, chair of Rutgers University’s Department of Food Science.
Economic incentives reinforce that self-monitoring: sales of prepackaged lettuce dropped nearly 20% in July amid the cyclosporiasis outbreak, Reuters reported. Taylor Farms says it invests $200 million annually in food safety protocols and independent audits, including regular monitoring of water quality and worker hygiene.
“The food industry is very good in terms of food safety overall if you think of how much food we eat,” said Dr. Kali Kniel, chair of microbial food safety at the University of Delaware.
Still, inspections remain “a critical food safety and consumer protection activity,” said Sandra Eskin, CEO of the nonprofit Stop Foodborne Illness.
“We’re not in the field. We’re not in the processing plant. So, we can’t see what goes on,” she said. “We bring a food item into our house, we can’t tell if it’s contaminated.”
About the data
_CBS News analyzed inspections and import data from_FDA’s Data Dashboard_. The analysis was limited to inspections of firms outside of the U.S. that were inspected under the “Foodborne Biological Hazards” program. To determine how many foreign manufacturers imported 90% of food into the U.S. last year, CBS News counted foreign-based manufacturers who delivered the most shipments of human food into the U.S., grouping together deliveries of multiple products on the same day by the same company as a single shipment. Meat and poultry were excluded, as they are under the purview of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, not the FDA._
John Kelly contributed to this report.
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