DeLauro’s Fight for Food Safety Goes to Senate Committee
WASHINGTON – For two years, Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-3rd) has pressed Congress unsuccessfully to create a single federal agency to regulate food safety. Now, in the aftermath of last month’s terrorist attacks, the heightened fears of bioterrorism attacks have put her proposal back into play.
DeLauro said in a statement that the issue of food safety and the need to strengthen food safety regulations is more important since the terrorist attacks. “Globalization, an aging population, and faster production and distribution of food increase the risk of people getting sick,” DeLauro said. “The problem is now further exacerbated by the threat of bioterrorism.”
“It particularly makes good sense now after Sept. 11, so the people can have a sense of security about the food supply,” she added.
On Wednesday, DeLauro testified before the Senate Government Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Government Management in support of the Safe Food Act that committee chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) has sponsored.
“I called this hearing because we need to make changes to a system in which chronic shortcomings could turn critical,” Durbin said in a press release. “Today, my goal remains unchanged-the only real difference is Sept. 11. Whether it’s undetected E. coli in an undercooked hamburger or a deliberate contamination of our food, we need to fix the system to safeguard against tragedy on any scale.”
In 1999 DeLauro sponsored a Safe Food Act that would have combined the functions of the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, the Commerce Department’s Seafood Inspection Program and other federal food safety functions. The new, independent agency would have been financed with the combined budgets of the consolidated agencies.
“American families should be able to sit down at the table and know that their food is free from contamination,” DeLauro said last month, as she visited her district in September during National Food Safety Education Month to campaign for the legislation and to preach the importance of food safety education.
Currently, 12 federal agencies administer as many as 35 food safety laws, many of which are conflicting. The two main agencies are the Food Safety and Inspection Service, which is responsible for the safety of meat, poultry and processed eggs, and the FDA, which is responsible for the safety of most other foods.
“We’ve got one agency that deals with cheese pizza and pepperoni pizza,” she said. “This is silly. We need to consolidate all of the efforts that deal with food and food safety in one place.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 5,000 Americans die each year from food-borne illnesses, more than 76 million become ill and 325,000 are hospitalized. The Agriculture Department estimates annual costs of $5.6 billion to $9.4 billion associated with medical expenses and losses in productivity from seven major types of food-borne illnesses.
“The FDA has reported that they would need more than 3,000 additional employees to be able to inspect all domestic [food] plants just once a year,” DeLauro said. “And they would need 1,500 more to increase inspection of imported food” from 1 per cent” of all such imports to 10 percent.
DeLauro said she offered an amendment to this year’s agriculture appropriations bill that would have provided $90 million for 1,600 additional FDA inspectors for imported food and $73 million for 630 domestic inspectors.
Peter Chalk, a policy analyst for RAND, spoke at the Wednesday hearing on the physical and economic threats of bioterrorism in America. He reported that the food industry constitutes roughly 2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. So a terrorist attack could jeopardize agricultural as well as industrial jobs, he said.
“The downstream effect of any deliberate act of sabotage or destruction to this highly valuable industry would be enormous, creating a tidal wave effect that would be felt by all these sectors, impacting, ultimately, on the ordinary citizen.·Terrorists could use this to their advantage, allowing them to create a general atmosphere of fear and anxiety without actually having to carry out indiscriminate civilian-oriented attacks,” Chalk said.
Bernard A. Schwetz, the FDA’s acting principal deputy commissioner, acknowledged that federal food safety needs to be strengthened but said that the solution is new services, such as surveillance systems, better prevention programs, faster responses to outbreaks and enhanced education.
“Our world is constantly changing, and we must continue to change with it,” he said. “Indeed, we cannot rest until we have built a strong and credible food safety system that addresses the full range of food safety issues.”
