Food safety bill passes House the day after it was defeated

In what came as a surprise move, the House passed a sweeping food safety reform bill a day after defeating a previous version. House Democrats kept revising the bill until they got it right. The previous version would have placed onerous burdens on small farmers and small food producers.

The version that passed the House today exempted these groups so long as they are selling their good directly to consumers, retailers and restaurants. When selling to wholesalers, however, they are covered by the same rules and restrictions as larger producers. That is, they are required to pay an annual $500 registration fee and to maintain a track-back system that identifies lots of food and their origins.

If passed by the Senate, the bill would require all facilities to have a food safety plan in place, would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to order food recalls, and would expand FDA access to company records.

Supporters of the bill say it will enable the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prevent food contamination through increased inspection of large food-preparation facilities. More than 76 million Americans fall sick every year from food-borne illnesses, while 5,000 of those die.

Under the bill, inspections would take place every six to 12 months at high-risk facilities and every three years at lower-risk plants.

Currently, plants may go years without an inspection.


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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 10:12 pm and is filed under FDA. You can follow any comments for this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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One Response to “Food safety bill passes House the day after it was defeated”

  1. Nayer Says:
    July 31st, 2009 at 3:22 pm

    You may think it’s great that this bill has passed the House, but this bill is basically like the NAIS program you don’t like applied to produce instead of animals. And the powers it gives the FDA make it a prelude to Codex Alimentarius, which basically would give the FDA control of food, telling farmers what they can grow and eliminating organic foods because they don’t like the use of manure.

    Remember that it applies to any “facility” that holds, processes, or manufactures food. Doesn’t that include your kitchen? Are you an idiot?

    This bill is the beginning of the end for small farmers and producers. In fact, its passage will pretty much eliminate them without further ado. And the FDA still won’t have to regulate or police the factory farms if it doesn’t want to.

    You had better pray that the Senate kills it.

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