The House Food Safety Bill in Brief

First, the food safety bill wasn't going to pass. Then it did.

The Agriculture Committee, including the ranking minority member, has had a great deal of input apparently, and they are well satisfied.

Eddie Gehman Kohan of Obamafoodorama, writing at Civil Eats, notes again the importance of putting the force of law behind food recalls. Now, even recalls involving deadly bacterial contamination, such as recent E. coli scares, are entirely voluntary and do not require retailers to stop selling products that may be affected.

The Consumers Union is pleased and Rep. Henry Waxman has given his assurances that the bill isn't intended to interfere with standard organic practices or the maintenance of on-farm biodiversity.

Nonetheless, as LaVidaLocavore's Jill Richardson points out, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition has ongoing concerns about the flat facility fees that won't fund the program but will mostly end up collecting fees from the greater number of small processing facilities that exist. Further, that organic farmers won't be exempted from following new standards that contradict with established organic practices, potential barriers to farm-to-institution provisioning, traceability exemptions for products that are identified by origin all the way to the consumer and the likelihood that product-specific exemptions have been handed out unfairly.

The Washington Post has an overview of the main provisions, which include an increase in the frequency of FDA inspections at high risk processing facilities.

Hopefully, they'll rub the burrs off in the Senate, but there's some important things in this bill.

(Photo credit: kimberlyfaye on Flickr.)