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Washington, D.C— In the face of a key Congressional subcommittee hearing about the safety of nation’s food supply, the leader of the union representing thousands of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) employees criticized the agency for continuing to move ahead with its much-maligned national reorganization plan. The plan includes not only closing seven of 13 labs within the agency’s Office of Regional Affairs (ORA), but also a complete restructuring of the agency’s field operations.

“The FDA has yet to explain to Congress, or the American people, how it is serving the public interest by shutting down more than half of its labs at a time when we are experiencing life-threatening food outbreaks,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley, adding that with all the serious food-related illness issues that have arisen recently, the FDA should boost resources, not deplete them.

With intense pressure from Congress building, the FDA continues to plan the logistics of its reorganization. The Oversight and Investigative Subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce met today to discuss ways the agency can improve efforts to combat food-borne illness. Committee chairman, Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), has requested the agency stop all action to implement the plan pending a review by the Energy and Commerce Committee.

“If these labs are closed, food and drug samples that would have been quickly tested locally will instead be shipped to other FDA facilities around the country, delaying testing and jeopardizing the safety and security of our nation’s food supply,” Kelley warned. “Not to mention all the professional scientific experience lost when agency employees leave to take jobs in the private sector rather than be reassigned to a FDA lab in a different community.”

The FDA announced its consolidation plans in February. As a result, labs in Denver, Detroit, Lenexa, Kan., Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Winchester, Mass., all are threatened with closure by 2009.

NTEU has joined with several Congressional representatives in rigorously questioning the agency’s reasoning behind the proposed reorganization. Last month, Kelley toured a FDA lab in Lenexa, Kan., with Reps. Nancy Boyda (D-Kan.), Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) and Dennis Moore (D-Kan.), as well as Lenexa Mayor Mike Boehm and members of local NTEU chapter 254, to highlight the ill effects of the reorganization plan labs on the public and the FDA workforce.

Earlier this year, in a coordinated effort to halt the consolidation, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) organized a bipartisan letter to the FDA, signed by 20 U.S. Senators, asking the agency to allow Congress to thoroughly review the plan’s impact. A similar letter also was coordinated in the House.

NTEU is the nation’s largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments, including 5,200 in the FDA.