Food Safety Legislation: Closer to reaching the Senate?

While the House passed the Food Safety Enhancement Act (HR 2749) before their summer recess, the Senate has postponed looking at their version of the proposed food safety bill (S510) due to the on-going health care reform debate.

However, now that the health care bill has passed in the House, we are one step closer to the legislators picking up the discussion of the food safety issue.

The Food Safety Enhancement Act contains several important provisions, including:

-Strengthening a commodity-specific approach to produce
-Ensuring that FDA will work with USDA, state departments of agriculture and other agencies in implementing all produce provisions
-Keeping a mandate for traceability across all foods
-Exempting produce from any duplicative requirements for COOL
-Enhancing the ability of fresh processors to develop individual HACCP programs without rigid one-size fits-all mandates
-Equal treatment of imported & domestic produce in food safety standards
-Ensuring tighter control of potential FDA quarantine authority, requiring an imminent threat to take such action and coordination with USDA
-Capping registration fees for both facilities and importers.

And while the bill going forward to the Senate has been significantly altered, some form of food safety legislation is likely to come out of this debate. Therefore, it is important that Tennessee legislators hear from Tennessee growers of all sizes. Let your senators know that you would like the legislation to address the following points:

1) Risk and size appropriate- consider smaller- and mid-sized growers through a tiered regulatory approach
2) Science-based- regulations need to be supported by scientific data, not arbitrary standards
3) Regional & production system differences- recognize differences among regions in the U.S. in scale and cultural practices
4) Market recovery- develops plans for market recovery in the legislation that moves forward.

To contact, Senators Corker and Alexander, visit:
www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?State=TN.