FDA making plans to end its routine food safety inspections, sources say

The Food and Drug Administration is drawing up plans that would end most of its routine food safety inspections work, multiple federal health officials tell CBS News, and effectively outsource this oversight to state and local authorities.

The plans have not been finalized and might need congressional action to fully fund, the officials said, who were not authorized to speak publicly. 

Some FDA employees have been working on a possible shift of the agency's routine food efforts to states for years, one current and one former official said, which could free up resources to focus on higher priority and foreign inspections. The FDA already outsources some routine food inspections through contracts with 43 states and Puerto Rico.