One Step Closer to Food Safety Legislation

by Jill Richardson · 2009-06-10 23:38:00 UTC
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There's a major food safety bill in front of Congress right now (The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009) and today it moved one step closer to becoming a law. It passed the House Energy & Commerce committee's subcommittee on Health. The bill will:

  • Require all "food facilities" (which does NOT include farms or restaurants) to pay $500 fees annually.

  • Require all "food facilities" to be inspected every 6 mos to 4 years, depending on their level of risk (the riskier you are, the more you get inspected).

  • Establish a new traceability system from farm to fork. This is going to be an enormous undertaking and it will be very difficult on a technical level for the FDA to accomplish it. It's hard to say right now how it's going to look in the end, but the bill does specifically exempt farms that sell directly to consumers and restaurants.

  • Give the FDA the authority to call a mandatory recall or look through a company's records.

The next step will be a vote by the full House Energy & Commerce Committee, expected next Wednesday. Following that, there will be a vote by the full House of Representatives. Assuming the bill passes the House, it will then go to the Senate. I don't have any information yet on what sort of timeframe we should expect from the Senate - they might not even look at it for months, even after it passes the House.

Jill Richardson
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