The U.S. House agriculture appropriations bill for fiscal year (FY) 2015 includes almost $2.6 billion in discretionary funding for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an increase of $23 million over the FY 2014 enacted level. The bill provides $4.5 billion total funding for FDA, including revenue from user fees, or $98 million above FY 2014. More specifically, the bill includes an increase of $25 million for food safety activities and an increase of $12 million for drug safety activities over the current budget.
The proposed bill includes revenue from the following fees: $798 million from prescription drug user fees; $128 million from medical device user fees; $312 million from human generic drug user fees; $21 million from biosimilar biological product user fees; $22 million from animal drug user fees; $6 million from animal generic drug user; $566 million from tobacco product user fees; $1.4 million from food and feed recall fees; $6 million from food re-inspection fees; and $5 million from voluntary qualified importer program fees.
The House Agriculture Subcommittee approved the FY 2015 appropriations bill on May 20. Representative Rose DeLauro (D-CT) was the only member of the subcommittee to vote against the bill. In her opening statement at the subcommittee markup, DeLauro criticized several aspects of the bill. For example, she suggested that substantially more resources are needed to support full implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) than the $25 million allocated in the bill.
The full committee markup of the FY 2015 Agriculture Appropriations Bill is scheduled for May 29. A copy of the bill can be found here.