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Food Fight

Some in Congress want a new agency for food safety as well as new standards for safeguarding the nation’s food supply.

New food contamination outbreaks plus the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) recent addition of β€œfood safety” to the list of high-risk federal programs makes it likely that Congressβ€”already deeply concerned about the E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks last fallβ€”will make major changes to federal regulation of packaged foods.

When he appeared before the House Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee on February 8, David M. Walker, GAO head and Comptroller General of the United States, used an example of packaged sandwiches to illustrate the misguided nature of current federal food regulation at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. β€œAlthough there are no differences in the risks posed by these products, USDA inspects wholesale manufacturers of open-face sandwiches sold in interstate commerce daily, while FDA inspects manufacturers of closed-face sandwiches an average of once every 5 years,” Walker said.

 

Safe Food Act

Increasing the number of food packaging line inspections could be one of the outcomes of more intense congressional interest in food safety, which was reflected by the hearing held February 8 by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CN), chairman of that House Appropriations subcommittee and founder and co-chair of the Congressional Food Safety Caucus. One week later, Rep. DeLauro and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) renewed their effort to consolidate food safety oversight by reintroducing their Safe Food Act, legislation that calls for the development of a single food safety agency and the implementation of mandatory federal standards for food safety. Besides creating a single food regulatory agency, the DeLauro/Durbin bill would establish requirements for tracing foods β€œfrom point of origin to retail sale.” That provision does not specify any particular means for tracing food; a DeLauro spokeswoman says the congressman would let the FDA decide how to implement that traceability requirement. But last November, hearings on the Durbin bill in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee featured testimony on the feasibility of using RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags on foods that could accelerate recalls such as the ones involving spinach in 2006.

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