Buckle Up! The Final Push for Food Safety is On!

by Jill Richardson · 2009-05-30 06:00:00 UTC
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This is it! We've got a food safety bill, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 (FSEA), and it will soon be introduced by Henry Waxman. He's posted a draft on his website and my lawyer friends are already combing through its 120-pages to figure out if it's "the change we need." But one thing seems certain: IF a food safety bill passes this year (and I think it will), it's going to be this one. We've got the next week or so to figure out what is in it, and what we want to see changed. We'll learn a bit at a June 3 hearing in the Energy and Commerce Committee, and soon after that, the bill will be marked up by the committee (i.e. they'll make all the changes they want to make in it). Then the committee will vote on it. If they've done a good job compromising and making deals in the mark up, it should pass. And it will most likely pass the full House as well. From there the Senate will take it up, and who knows what is going to happen there (or when it will happen). But it's up to us to make sure that the House passes the best bill possible so that the Senate can have the best possible starting point.

So what does the bill include?

The good: The bill gives the FDA the authority to call for mandatory recalls. It also calls for increased inspections by the FDA for all food facilities (factories and warehouses, but not farms or restaurants). Currently these places get inspected about once a decade. The bill increases the frequency to every 6 mos to 4 years, depending on risk.

The not so good: The bill assesses "user fees" of $1000 per food facility to pay for the cost of increased inspection. While this is what is politically feasible at the moment, it's not ideal. I'd rather that the FDA didn't get funded by the people it regulates. Also, why is the woman who sells jam at my farmer's market required to pay the same amount as General Mills or Kraft? Note that farms and restaurants do NOT have to pay these user fees.

The missing: There is no current requirement for microbial testing for pathogens and reporting of results to the FDA. Umm... Congress? Wanna fix that?

If you want to make sure that the final bill is written to our liking and not to the lobbyists' liking, please call your member of Congress and voice your opinions. You can also look up members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and give them a call. You can email your own member of Congress, but make sure you call the others. Typically they don't read emails that come from outside their districts.

Jill Richardson
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