Summary: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for ensuring that foreign cheese imported into the United States meets the same safety and labeling standards applied to domestic cheese. Some exporting countries do not have food safety standards similar to those in the United States, and their cheeses have had higher contamination rates than cheeses imported from other countries. Although FDA has tried to develop certification programs requiring foreign exports to meet U.S. standards, it has only one certification program for cheese--with France. FDA, however, has not formally monitored the French program and lacks enough data to determine the program's effectiveness. GAO is also concerned about the low percentage of product samples from imported cheeses that FDA collects and analyzes for contamination. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Food Safety and Quality: FDA Can Improve Monitoring of Imported Cheese, by William E. Gahr, Associate Director for Food and Agriculture Issues, before the Subcommittee on International Economic Policy and Trade, House Committee on Foreign Affairs. GAO/T-RCED-92-79, July 9, 1992 (eight pages).
