"The major problem is that no one person is in charge," said Jeff Levi, PhD, at a news conference about the report, titled Fixing Food Safety: Protecting America's Food from Farm-to-Fork.

"We really haven't paid attention to giving the food safety agencies, the FDA and USDA [US Department of Agriculture] in particular, the tools to do the job we expect them to do," said Michael Taylor, research professor of health policy at George Washington University and former administrator of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).

Among near-term steps to address the problems, the report calls for doubling the FDA's food safety funds over the next 5 years and putting one person in charge of the agency's food safety programs. For the long term, the nation should move toward consolidating all federal food safety programs in one agency, the group recommends.