Time for Food Safety Reform

Dustin Ensinger warns of the vulnerability of our nation's food supply at Economy in Crisis.Org:

In the wake of a rash of food-borne illnesses caused by contaminated peppers, spinach, peanuts and most recently pistachios, one lawmaker is proposing splitting the inept Food and Drug Administration into two separate entities and drastically overhauling the nation's neglected food safety system.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) has introduced H.R. 875, the Food and Safety Modernization Act of 2009. The bill would create a new agency, the Food Safety Administration, under the umbrella of the Department of Health and Human Services, to take over the responsibilities of the FDA.

"There is an urgency that we move on strong food-safety reform. It is a high priority in Congress," Rosa DeLauro, chairwoman of a House of Representatives Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the FDA, said at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit in Washington. "I'm optimistic that this could finally be the Congress in which we deal with this."

Not only would the bill create an entire new agency to oversee the nation’s food safety, but it would also provide the FDA with mandatory recall authority, make it easier to trace the source of contamination and increase the penalties for companies that sell tainted products.

According to some, reform is severely needed. The nation is left vulnerable through a largely unprotected food supply, they say.

"The U.S. food safety system is seriously out of date and fragmented, leaving Americans vulnerable," said Michelle Larkin, public health team director and senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "We shouldn't have to worry that our kids are going to get sick from their school lunch or that our family is at risk if they eat out at a restaurant or at home."

Indeed, currently, the FDA is tasked with overseeing 80 percent of the nation’s food supply and, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, they are doing an extremely poor job. The CDCP estimates that every year 76 million Americans are afflicted by food poisoning. Of those, an estimated 5,000 will die each year.

"Unfortunately, we wait until people die before we respond when we've known all along there are problems here," DeLauro said, according to Reuters.

The economic cost of having a dangerously vulnerable food supply is in the billions, according to some estimates. That is yet another reason why food safety reform is such a salient issue. A well protected food supply could save the country billions every year in health care costs and lost worker productivity, according to one study on the issue.

"We are way overdue for a makeover," Michelle Larkin of Trust for America's Health, a food safety advocacy group, told The Los Angeles Times. "It costs us around $44 billion annually in medical care and lost productivity, so the stakes are really high."

Source TradeReform.org:

Rosa DeLauro has introduced a food safety bill. It targets imports as one of its provisions. House Ag Committee chairman Collin Peterson has apparently said that imported food safety is a priority for him this year.

Rosa Delauro's bill is H.R. 875. It would create a Food Safety Administration (FSA) within the Department of Health and Human Services that would take over Food and Drug Administration duties relating to food safety but not those of the USDA.

The bill would require domestic and foreign food establishments to register with the FSA, and the registration could be suspended for violations of food safety laws.

http://www.economyincrisis.org/articles/show/2696