Washington DC - A Congressional committee has given the U.S. Food and Drug Administration until June 1 to produce requested records concerning drug and food safety in the United States or they will subpoena them.

Rep. John Dingell, (D-MI) chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Rep. Bart Stupak, (D-MI) chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, told Michael Leavitt, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that the FDA has failed to respond to requests of the committee and in some instances, has produced redacted records to the committee without any prior consultation on such redactions.

“Since the 110th Congress began, Committee has requested briefings, documents and information regarding a range of problems with the operation of the Food and Drug Administration”, the committee’s letter to HHS said. “With the exception of the January 23 request regarding the generic drug approval process and the provision of two food safety briefings, all of the other requests form this committee have been, at best, only partially answered and several have been ignored altogether. The requests for documents and information have been outstanding for one to three months”.

“The delays and quality of responses to the Committee’s requests concerning FDA are unacceptable”, the committee told the FDA. “With the exception of patient identifiers in medical records, all documents produced to the committee are to be unredacted”.

The FDA claims its been “as responsive as possible” to the document requests.

The committee has been seeking information regarding the outbreak of salmonella in peanut butter, generic drug approvals, the contamination of pet food with ingredients imported from China and other issues.