After several outbreaks ranging from salmonella in peanut butter to E. coli in spinach, concerns about our food inspection system have caught the attention of lawmakers in Washington, D.C. The recently proposed Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, H.R. 875, now in the House Agriculture Committee and Energy and Commerce Committee, aims "to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes."The bill would combine the food safety functions of the current Food and Drug Administration into a separate division of the Department of Health and Human Services, establish a food safety commissioner and update food safety laws that affect the 80 percent of the food supply regulated by FDA. H.R. 875 would re-state that the new Food Safety Administration has authority to conduct on-farm inspections for food safety.
The full text of the bill is available here.
Although the intentions of the bill are good, many fear that it will ultimately harm small-scale producers and farmers markets. Some claim it would "ruin agriculture" (click here to read more); others call it the "trojan horse food safety bill" (click here to read more) or implore the public to "fear the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009!" (click here to read more). Much of the concern arises from the inspection and regulation aspects of the Bill, which could hand off certain responsibilities to state and local authorities. To read more about small producers' concerns, click here.
While there are those in opposition to this specific legislation, it is widely recognized that some changes to our food safety system are needed. University of Wisconsin medicine professor Dr. Dennis Maki, wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, that the U.S. could take three steps to improve food safety and prevent a quarter of the country's population from getting foodbourne illnesses each year. Dr. Maki's recommendations include:
- An international moratorium on using growth-promoting antibiotics in animal feed.
- Using bar codes on all commercially available food, to indicate its point of origin.
- Routine irradiation of selected foods before they reach the grocery shelves.
According to AgWeek, there are a number of good ideas floating around Capitol Hill that would improve food safety. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo, would give the FDA authority to issue mandatory recalls for contaminated food and would require it to devise a system to trace food and produce from the farm to the dinner table. To read the full AgWeek article, Food Safety Requires New Legislation, click here.
Posted: 04/20/09
