U.S. senators: FDA funds do not meet global needs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not have the funding it needs to adequately protect the nation's increasingly global supply of food and drugs, a bipartisan Senate panel said on Tuesday.

The lawmakers said the agency needed millions more dollars than the $2.4 billion that the Bush administration requested for 2009 if it is to keep pace with needed inspections of overseas manufacturing plants as well as monitor drug side effects and food contamination.

"There is no new money for food safety, medicinal products safety or anything else," said Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat and chairman of a Senate appropriations subcommittee. "I find that troubling."

The panel is weighing how much taxpayer money to provide the FDA for fiscal year 2009 starting in October. The discussions come as the agency grapples with the latest drug scare, the contamination of Baxter International Inc's blood thinner heparin, which has a raw ingredient made in China.

Tainted pet food and bacteria-laced peanut butter, spinach and lettuce also have made headlines recently.

Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah, the panel's ranking Republican, defended the FDA's overall performance, but said: "The budget that has been submitted by the administration appears to me to be inadequate to meet those challenges."

A group of outside experts convened by the FDA has said the agency needs an additional $375 million to ramp up its oversight of products that make up roughly one-quarter of the U.S. economy.

FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach, whom President George W. Bush appointed, said the agency would have trouble utilizing such a large sum in one year, but could make use of an additional $100 million.

He said some of that money could go to creating new FDA offices overseas, including in China. The agency is setting up a temporary facility in Beijing next month and hopes to make it official by September. Two other FDA offices are planned in Shanghai and Guangzhou for a total of 13 employees in China.

Overall, the FDA wants to have five offices overseas and is also eyeing India, the Middle East, Latin America and Europe, von Eschenbach added.

More funds could also hasten the agency's work to upgrade its aging computer systems, which are critical for monitoring drug side-effect databases and other information, he said.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)