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Washington D.C. — The House Appropriations Committee has taken a firm position against a proposal by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to close more than half its laboratories, a stance welcomed by the leader of the union representing FDA employees.

In its markup today of the fiscal 2008 Agriculture FDA Appropriations bill, the committee included report language providing no funds for the FDA in the coming fiscal year to close the labs as part of any reorganization of its Office of Regulatory Affairs.

“This is a very positive step for the agency and its employees, and an important move to address the safety of the nation’s food supply,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents some 600 FDA lab employees and about 5,200 FDA employees overall. NTEU has been leading the fight against the FDA plan.

The agency has proposed closings its laboratories in Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Winchester, Mass., and San Juan, Puerto Rico. It has 13 such labs.

In a recent letter to committee chair, Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wisc.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), chair of the Agriculture, FDA and Related Agencies subcommittee, Kelley urged for the approved language.

She warned that closing the labs would result in an unacceptable loss of experienced and skilled scientific professionals who are critical to the FDA’s mission of ensuring the safety of the U.S. food supply as well as the safety and efficacy of drugs, medical devices, cosmetics and other products. Kelley also commended the two representatives for their leadership on the issue.

A growing number of members of the House and Senate have expressed their clear and strong reservations about the FDA plan, and have sought to discourage the agency from moving ahead with

its plan to consolidate the regional labs into a fewer number of ‘mega-labs’ despite the lack of any evidence that larger labs are in a better position to perform the work.

Earlier this week, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight held a hearing on food safety issues at which the lab-closing plan came under renewed scrutiny and criticism. Both Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. John Dingell have sharply challenged the FDA proposal.

Rep. Stupak welcomed the Appropriations Committee action on FDA funding. He said: “The labs the FDA has targeted for closure have significant expertise in food and drug safety. One of these labs, located in Massachusetts, is the only facility that performs work detecting possible radiological poisoning of food. Yet another lab, in San Francisco, has great expertise in dealing with seafood imports. The Kansas City lab played an instrumental role in tracking the problems of the recent pet food contamination. The Detroit field lab saves U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by studying drug stability.”

Meanwhile, President Kelley was critical of the FDA for “continuing to insist it will move forward with this ill-conceived plan despite its failure to articulate any supportable reason for it.” NTEU, she added, will keep up its efforts to prevent the implementation of the plan, including seeking to ensure that the funding prohibition in the agriculture bill becomes law.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.