House Passes Far-Reaching Food Safety Bill

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House has passed a far-reaching food safety bill in the wake of the recent outbreak of salmonella in peanuts that killed at least nine people.

The legislation would require more government inspections and oversight of food manufacturers and give the Food and Drug Administration new authority to order recalls. It also would require the FDA to develop a system for better tracing food-borne illnesses.

The House passed the bill Thursday a day after rejecting it. Farm-state members had argued that the bill would be too invasive on farms and had pushed colleagues to vote against it as it was considered under a special procedure that requires a two-thirds vote. It was rejected by a few votes.

Comments

[EgyptianMysterySchool]

A true food "safety" bill would eliminate fast food, chemicals and growth hormones and not organic farms.

[OnestaOrganics]

As small certified organic pet food manufacturer, I understand that keeping records is work. Several people complained about this when looking at this bill, but since I can do it I don't buy this argument. Without detailed record keeping, I really couldn't (shouldn't!) be certified because I would know little about what goes when into each of my frequent, ever so small production batches. I am also not scared to have my facility inspected (I got used to this one for my organic inspections); it really doesn't matter much when a facility is inspected, if it is kept clean at all times. And cleanliness is important if you deal with (raw) food, because there can be enough contamination outside the facility.

I believe from my experience, that no system can work if regulations don't exist, are leaky, or aren't enforced. I see this daily with the missing regulation governing organic pet foods. What few consumers know, is that only certified organic pet food claims are regulated/enforced , other (non-certified) organic claims aren't and are therefore often abused. This is a disadvantage for consumers which are misled, and pet food companies which go the (certified) organic pet food path, despite the greater cost (higher prices, fewer sales) of doing so.

I think this is an important bill and it can work if the guys on the top don't listen to the money-waiving bean counters but to those who try to help establish a safer, saner, healthier food supply.

[blimie]

Enforce the current laws. We don't need more laws on the books and FDA does not need any more power, it's corrupt.

[flowereater]

Health reform won't do much good unless we have food reform too. This is a small first step in a huge problem.

[TigersEye]

I agree. I remember the days when you could eat meat, spinach, peanuts, etc. and not have to worry about salmonella, ecoli, mad cow disease, etc. I remember when people could eat steak tartare (it was never my thing, though). The state of our food manufacturing is disgraceful. How did they let it get this bad?

[Sparhawk]

greed replaced responsibility

[mudbones]

I thought we were going to let businesses police themselves, oh wait, we tried that for 8 years and it didn't work. How many people died from contaminated food?
It's about time this was passed.

[EgyptianMysterySchool]

This bill is the true example of a "Wolf In Sheep's Clothing" . This bill is nothing more than a front for more government control, corporate farming and it is a danger to small, organic farms and even home gardens. Like the bankruptcy bill written by the banking industry, this bill is written under the influence of the corporate farming that was rightfully demonized in the movie "Food, Inc.". This bill is great for Monsanto, factory farming and the like - but it's a danger to the citizens that it feigns to protect.

Why does a "Food Safety" bill have martial law provisions, allowing the FDA to quarantine large geographic areas?

Why is the government trying to dictate how crops should be raised and harvested?

Why is it that even home gardens can be subject to pay a $500 registration fee?

Why is this bill giving the FDA the power to make random warrantless searches of businesses and local farmers w/out any hint of violations - a direct violation of the Constitution?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/6/17/743564/-Henry-Waxmans-betrayal-of-our-existenceHR-2749

http://www.infowars.com/hr-2749-food-safety-bill-has-martial-law-provisions/

"One provision allows the FDA to declare food "adulterated" simply if the grower or manufacturer has failed to follow safety standards, regardless of whether the food is actually tainted."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/30/AR2009073003271.html

[3dtrix]

Hear you loud and clear - Fresh, local, organic - does that sound dangerous to you? It does if you're agribusiness, and want to see the sustainablity movement strangled in its crib...

[condor101]

There once was a CEO of a Peanut Processing company that resulted in 8 deaths? He was subpoened by congress and he took the 5th amendment. The guy had "GULITY" all over his face.
He hid away from the media and nothing more was mentioned about him in the MSM.

(continued below)

[condor101]

He should have been charged with a crime because through his memos, it clearly showed that he allowed peanuts to be sold in the marketplace, even though he knew they were contaminated.....All in the name of profits!

He was never charged and is a free man. 8 people died because of the peanuts.
What a corrupt food system we have in this country.
I have minimized my purchases of any foods.......... wrapped, bottled, etc.
I buy as much as possible from Farmers Markets.

[BannedNBoston]

Ill bett mandatory vaccines are tucked in that bill too.

[lilbro]

Until corporations like Tysons and Monsanto start being ethical and green, these bills while meaningful will not be effective. See the movie Food Inc

[mdlw]

Dr. Max Gerson. Google about this guy and The Gerson Institute. And there is a documentary film done in 2007 by a young man called The Beautiful Truth you might find interesting, too. I watched it from the internet at netflix.

[PlaceboStudman]

This is a great first step. But, the truth of the matter is, until or unless the Feds start growing some brain cells and separate the drug oversight from the food oversight divisiion of the FDA, this is kind of pointless. I don't even wanna know the possibilities of what is in my meat, fruits and vegetables if someone is handling something like Viagra one day and beef the next day.

Yeah, I know it's not likely to happen, but so long as the FDA keeps the food oversight and the drug oversight in the same division, anything is possible

[SwansonBlogBen]

PlaceboStudman, do you really want to know what's on your food as far as pesticides, herbicides, chemicals and other pollutants? Check this out: http://bit.ly/c6wn2 You can see side-by-side comparisons of traditionally-grown versus organically-grown foods.

[bluejoewho]

Nice. Thank you.

[Stacy Miller - Huffpost Blogger]

Check out the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and National Organic Coalition's response to a letter sent by Rep. Dingell the day before passage of the bill. These point will be important when the senate takes it up after the recess.
http://sustainableagriculture.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/food-safety-dingell-rebuttal.pdf

Fortunately, farmers markets themselves are exempt from registration and farms selling at least 51% directly to consumers are exempt. In the rule-making, "51% of what," will be an important question, I imagine.

[CaptainFailmore]

Thanks for the letter. I'll be keeping that for later.

When I first heard of this bill several months ago, it was disturbing. It was clear from the outset that if it really were a 'one size fits all' food law, it would impact small farms and cooperatives over industrial food processors by a gross proportion. Not only that, but as the letter neatly points out, those small farms would be footing most of the bill for this regulation, which should be focusing on and paid for by 'Big Food' instead. That in itself is so unfair as to be downright insulting - the lowest risk food producers, paying a fee regardless of their income to control the highest risk processors, to whom the fee would be a truly negligible expense, who routinely ignore existing regulation with impunity anyway. Much of the FDA's new powers struck me as unnecessary and excessive as well, and combined with the vagueness and overly broad wording of the bill's language, it looked to me like it was just another Washington power grab - and a pat on the back for the food industry.

Knowing that there are exemptions is somewhat comforting, but big questions such as those addressed in the letter remain unanswered. I'm glad my representative voted against the bill, but this legislative cannonball keeps thundering forward. Until the matter of funding is resolved and the financial burden is shifted away from small farmers and onto big industry, this isn't agrarian reform -

[CaptainFailmore]

... this is abuse.

The site ate the last three words of my post. I hope they were tasty.

[Peter007]

This bill was written by the large, major food processors. The effect of the bill will be to eliminate the small independent food suppliers. The regulations will put the small companies out of business.
Didn't anyone find it odd that the news story about organic food having the same nutritional value as non-organic food came out at this time?
This is a bad bill with a "happy" name on it.
Big business is in bed with big government and campaign contributions.

[lmthp]

"The effect of the bill will be to eliminate the small independent food suppliers. The regulations will put the small companies out of business."
Too true, IMV that was the intent of the bill from the outset, to reduce and ultimately eliminate competition for Big Agra,

[SwansonBlogBen]

I think you correctly took this story one step further by making the connection between the news story coming out about organic food not being any better for you...which is certainly not true. If you read that story to the end, it even admits that the studies used are not substantive, that they left out several more studies that may have showed just the opposite and "nutrition content" has nothing to do with the loads of chemical pesticides and pollutants on "traditional" food products. Go local, go organic and stay healthy! Here's a natural health insider's take on other recent media "debates" on health and safety: http://bit.ly/17mFl0.

[LickDaCat]

Follow the money for any bill coming out of congress. Look to see who profits from the legislation, then check out the campaign contributions and there will be a connection there. We have the best government that bribes can buy. We could start checking the freezers in congressional offices for bags of bribe money but then the smarter ones use numbered Swiss bank accounts.

This is a bad bill and needs to be defeated in the senate. We don't need any more government control over our lives. The government is taking over control of all water, even puddles after it rains. Now they want to control all food, tax us for breathing, sodas, Twinkies, chocolate and anything they can think of taxing, just name it and they will tax it.

Our government is out of control and they need to be stopped! We need to take our country back!

[MissingAmerica]

This may be a step closer, but does it protect us from the food we are forced to purchase that is processed in China, a country devoid of health and safety regulation? I say "forced", because often we can find no alternatives since most of our processing has been outsourced. We need to start doing for ourselves again. Locally, we have a number of canneries and food processing businesses that I'm sure would love to reopen, and I know of a number of unemployed people who would love to get their jobs back!

[kareemachan]

Bingo!