Senator Tom Coburn Stands in the Way of Food Safety

Update 12/21/10: It took more than a year-and-a-half of pushing, but on December 21, 2010, Congress finally passed the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510). The move came after more than 1,800 Change.org members signed our petition asking Congress to pass the food safety reform bill. You can read more about this victory here.

There's a huge threat to America's food safety system, and it's not Wright County Egg's Jack DeCoster. OK, so DeCoster's a pretty bad egg, but there's another guy standing in the way of positive reform, too. Oklahoma's Republican Sen. Tom Coburn says that he won't support the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510) unless Democrats figure out a way to pay for the bill, the Associated Press reports.

Coburn's penny-pinching threatens to crush any chance the legislation has to pass in the Senate this year. The House passed the bill more than a year ago, and it's been stalled in the Senate ever since, much to the chagrin of foodies and public health advocates. Still, Coburn is sticking to his guns, claiming that S. 510 would add to the national deficit and expand the power of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an agency Coburn says is troubled.

What Coburn fails to realize, though, is the reason that the FDA is so troubled in the first place. The agency earned such a bad rep because under current regulations, it lacks the power to be even remotely effective at ensuring food safety. Expanding its power is the only way to fix the FDA.

Under current law, the FDA can't issue mandatory food recalls. Instead, the agency merely works with food manufacturers to negotiate a recall. Producers like Wright County Egg, the factory farm partially responsible for churning out millions of salmonella-tainted eggs, can ultimately decide for themselves whether or not they want to recall a product. The FDA Food Safety Modernization would provide the FDA with the power to force producers to recall contaminated foods.

Another big crack in our nation's food safety system exists because the FDA fails to regularly inspect major food production and processing sites. As you may remember, when inspectors finally did investigate Wright County Egg, they found manure, maggots, and mice in close proximity to the eggs that wind up on diners' breakfast plates. Irresponsible producers like Wright County Egg get away with these kinds of shenanigans because they'll oftentimes go for more than 10 years at a time without an FDA inspection. The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act would mandate more frequent inspections and put the pressure on producers to clean up their acts.

Coburn claims funding the food safety reform bill would push the country further into debt. Beefing up the FDA and food safety standards will, of course, require a fair amount of dough. But here's the alternative: The U.S. sees 76 million cases of foodborne illness every year, costing Americans about $152 billion a year in lost work days, doctors' visits, and medications. Food safety problems already cost the country a fortune — passing new legislation would cut back on those costs and protect consumers' health.

You would think that the recent recall of more than a half-billion eggs along with the 85 food recalls the country's seen in the past year alone would push Coburn to support the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. Yet the senator continues to put dollars and cents before the health and well-being of American citizens. Sign our petition asking Coburn to reverse his position and support S. 510.

Photo credit: rutlo via Flickr