Michael Pollan & Eric Schlosser: Food Safety Bill 'Best Opportunity In A Generation' To Fix Food Supply

Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser in the New York Times:

THE best opportunity in a generation to improve the safety of the American food supply will come as early as Monday night, when the Senate is scheduled to vote on the F.D.A. Food Safety Modernization bill. This legislation is by no means perfect. But it promises to achieve several important food safety objectives, greatly benefiting consumers without harming small farmers or local food producers.

The bill would, for the first time, give the F.D.A., which oversees 80 percent of the nation's food, the authority to test widely for dangerous pathogens and to recall contaminated food. The agency would finally have the resources and authority to prevent food safety problems, rather than respond only after people have become ill. The bill would also require more frequent inspections of large-scale, high-risk food-production plants.

Read the whole story: Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser in the New York Times

Comments

[oioiman]

08:18 PM on 11/29/2010

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/s-510-is-hissing-in-the-grass/

S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act*, may be the most dangerous bill in the history of the US. It is to our food what the bailout was to our economy, only we can live without money.

“If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.” ~Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower

It is similar to what India faced with imposition of the salt tax during British rule, only S 510 extends control over all food in the US, violating the fundamental human right to food.

Monsanto says it has no interest in the bill and would not benefit from it, but Monsanto’s Michael Taylor who gave us rBGH and unregulated genetically modified (GM) organisms, appears to have designed it and is waiting as an appointed Food Czar to the FDA (a position unapproved by Congress) to administer the agency it would create — without judicial review — if it passes. S 510 would give Monsanto unlimited power over all US seed, food supplements, food and farming.

[Bumpkins]

07:51 PM on 11/29/2010

This is great for the people......long time coming.

[tice]

04:47 PM on 11/29/2010

Can someone help me out here? I read the bill summary and it looks like a lot in the way of making sure growers are making note of where contamination could occur, implementing a plan to stop it, and making records of those plans that can be inspected by the FDA were there to be an outbreak.

Aren't growers already doing this anyway?

Is this bill bad because what it says specifically or how it could be abused? Can anyone point to a specific section of the bill and the problems they foresee?

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2749&tab=summary

Thank you.

[tice]

04:48 PM on 11/29/2010

Sorry, by "doing this" I meant aren't growers already aware of possible contamination and taking actions to prevent it. Not necessarily keeping records for FDA inspection upon an outbreak.

[Bumpkins]

07:53 PM on 11/29/2010

Growers are self-inspecting.....like BP.....there was a policy of dis-manteling the FDA inspections....the industry was to self-regulate.

[Leslie Goldman]

04:10 PM on 11/29/2010

Barry Logan in this video, calls industrial ag poisonous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XvF3SKLxM8&feature=player_embedded

A micro-farmer in the tradition of our future as well as our past,
#S510 and the principles it stands upon are a failed system.

I love Michael Pollan's work, and my ally is off base here.

I call for a National Conversation on Food Safety,
not a rushed job. Now is the time to truly understand what food is,
and what Food Safety and this bill is not.

WHAT IS FOOD FOR?
http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1731095
Food was not intended to be a commodity.

ELEPHANT IN THE CLOSET

MICHAEL R TAYLOR,
OUR FOOD CZAR, key point man for Food Safety
and a proponent of Codex alignment
http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Michael_Taylor

CLEAR AND PRESENT POTENTIAL DANGER
THROUGH INCREASING FDA REGULATORY POWERS NOW

FDA is already raiding those who want the right
to use food as medicine.
http://hartkeisonline.com/food-politics/how-the-fda-can-use-s-510-to-close-down-raw-milk-dairies/

[Insanity rules]

04:09 PM on 11/29/2010

"Our food supply will be safer by connecting the supplier and the consumer, not dividing further it with a layer of government­." previous post. Great idea!

Local control first/state control second/federal control on entities that cross state lines.

[bllnsinchnge]

02:47 PM on 11/29/2010

Giving more power to the FDA to regulate natural supplements and natural sustainable food and agriculture is a mistake.
The FDA is a highly reactive agency. The CDC does far more in educating facts and causes to food suppliers.
The point that the FDA would be able to mandate recalls is comical. Any food supplier who would not mandatory recall a suspect product would deserve the consequences and be an example.
Food suppliers will pay an additional $241 million in fees, raising food prices.
Taxpayers will pay additional 1.14 billion over 5 years.
Our food supply will be safer by connecting the supplier and the consumer, not dividing further it with a layer of government.

[ShanaJuly]

01:26 PM on 11/29/2010

How many republicorp are against it?

[jeanruss]

11:43 AM on 11/29/2010

What a sellout Pollan has turned out to be. This is a terrible bill that will greatly harm the organic movement. It benefits Monsanto (and was probably written by them) and other big producers, who don't want ANY food freedom. The FDA already has the power to regulate big producers, but doesn't do it. Small farmers do not create the food problems we are having and should be exempt. This bill has so many un-American and non-democratic aspects, that it should be thrown out. Big agri-business doesn't want us to have the ability to feed ourselves, even interfering in home gardens and organic seeds. This is a terrible misleading article by someone who has pretended to be for organic growing. Shame on him. Another PHONY.

[JUSTIANA RIGHT]

01:08 PM on 11/29/2010

I feel like we are surrounded by an episode of Stepford Wives...except in this instance, it would be Stepford Advocates.

[signgrrl]

02:16 PM on 11/29/2010

but the FDA did not have RECALL power, and now it will.

[Insanity rules]

04:10 PM on 11/29/2010

Why not give the FDA recall power and that's it? Why give them the ability to regulate down the the nth degree?