Food Safety Legislation Set to Hit Senate
By Kristi Bahrenburg Janzen
Posted May 28, 2010
Having voted on its major financial regulation bill May 20, the Senate can return to other pressing issues, with controversial new legislation on “food safety” back on the plate, perhaps as soon as after the Memorial Day recess. The Senate is back in session June 7 until the Fourth of July. A spokesman in the office of Senator Durbin (D-IL) said Thursday, “We’re hopeful it comes up during that working period.” The House of Representatives passed a bill on “food safety modernization” last summer. After both bills (S510 and HR2749) are passed, they will head to a “conference committee” where differences will be ironed out before heading to the president for a signature. A version the bill is widely expected to pass in the not-too-distant future.
The proposed new law is wide-ranging and relates to many topics including small-scale meat processors, produce handling, food labeling, documentation, traceback requirements, ensuring the safety of imports, fees to help pay for enhanced safety, and more. For many observers, updating the rules is a no-brainer, as the current system is antiquated and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lacks teeth to enforce requirements, while contamination scares involving salmonella, e-coli bacteria, other pathogens and industrial products have outraged people throughout the country.
However, a controversy surrounds the methods that would supposedly lead to the safest food, with many small-scale local food producers fearing their interest are not being represented, intentionally or otherwise. Many direct-marketing, small-scale producers—and their supporters—argue the rules are inappropriate for their operations’ size, superfluous because they duplicate existing checks, prohibitively expensive and misguided, as they would not in fact make the food supply safer. Critics fear the kind of small-scale farms that supply farmers markets, road-side stands and community supported agriculture programs could become a casualty of the legislation.
The bipartisan Senate legislation was introduced in March 2009 by U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Richard Burr (R-NC). It is intended to “dramatically improve the way the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) protects the safety of the nation’s food supply,” according to Sen. Durbin’s website. The bill is also cosponsored by Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA).
“Over the last year we’ve seen major recalls of peanut butter spiked with salmonella, spinach laced with e-coli and chili loaded with botulism,” Durbin said. “These are not isolated incidents and are the result of an outdated, under-funded and overwhelmed food safety system. Today’s bipartisan bill will improve the FDA’s ability to prevent food-borne illness outbreaks and ensure FDA responds quickly and effectively when outbreaks do occur.” (For more, see: http://durbin.senate.gov/showRelease.cfm?releaseId=308982.)
Others disagree: “S.510 and HR 2749 represent landmark legislation that will significantly increase the federal government's power to regulate intrastate commerce while hurting this country's ability to produce safe food and to become self-sufficient in food production,” notes Pete Kennedy of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization created to help further sustainable farming and direct farmer-to-consumer transactions. “Both bills contain numerous provisions imposing a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme that will make it difficult for small farms and local producers to comply with the new laws,” he says. “The legislation will disproportionately impact local food producers, the sector of our food system producing the safest most nutritious food, thus benefiting food imports and industrial processors (those sectors of the food system that have been most responsible for the problems with food safety).”
The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) and The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) are following the legislation closely, aiming to bring the concerns of locally oriented farmers to light. Amendments proposed by Senator John Tester (D-MT), for example, would “exempt farm and non-farm facilities with gross sales of less than $500,000 from requirements that they write comprehensive food safety plans and traceback and record keeping requirements, and would exempt farms that direct market at least half their product from new FDA produce farm regulations,” notes the NSAC on its blog.
As PASA’s executive director Brian Snyder said in a letter to his membership, “It’s worth noting that the Tester amendments in particular WILL NOT be incorporated into the final bill before it is introduced, but will likely be considered on the floor of the Senate. These amendments, which would exempt smaller operations (less than $500K gross) from major provisions of the bill, are simply too controversial to be adopted through a less formal process.”
“The Senate bill is superior to the House version in the latter regard, which is one reason to remain hopeful. But we all need to understand that a presidential signature on some version of this legislation will, in any case, only mark the midpoint in this process. There will be much diligence needed and work to be done as regulations are written, reviewed and implemented, and we will need to stick with this process every step of the way,” Snyder added.
To read another excellent article on the topic, check out “Small Butchers Wary of USDA’s Food Safety Plan,” by Carolyn Lochhead, posted May 23, 2010 on SF Gate (home of the San Francisco Chronicle) by clicking here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/05/23/MNQ41DEQK8.DTL. To keep on top of developments, go to the NSAC’s blog at http://sustainableagriculture.net, read PASA’s updates to the membership (join at www.pasafarming.org), see www.farmtoconsumer.org and/or check out Senator Durbin’s homepage at: http://durbin.senate.gov/issues/leg_foodsafety.cfm. To read the Senate bill, click here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:S510:. Now, before the legislation is finalized, is the time to offer input to legislators.
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