Reid Continues Press For Food Safety Vote

For the second time in a week, the top Senate Democrat is continuing to push Republicans to allow a vote on pending legislation to reform the way the nation protects its food supply.

The Senate GOP, led by Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, is blocking consideration of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S.510), designed to better protect consumers from falling prey to tainted food, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

“America has one of the safest and most abundant food supplies in the world. But it’s not perfect: Food-borne illnesses sicken one in four people every year. As many as 5,000 Americans die from food poisoning,” Reid says in a Wednesday floor statement.

“The bill we are bringing to the floor is simple: it will make our food safer. It is a bipartisan bill that was reported out unanimously from the HELP Committee,” Reid adds, referring to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee which earlier approved the bill for a full Senate vote.

Foodborne pathogens cause 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths annually, and may contribute to long-term disease in more than 1 million Americans, according to estimates by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Furthermore, the total economic impact of foodborne illness across the nation is estimated to be $152 billion annually, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts website.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates 80 percent of the U.S. food supply, including virtually all food imports, but the agency is underfunded, overwhelmed, and operates under an obsolete, largely reactive 1938 law, reform supporters note.

“People often think of food poisoning as an upset stomach that goes away in a few hours or a day. Sometimes that’s all it is. But sometimes it is much worse. I have met with families who have been seriously sickened by the food they’ve eaten – people who were hospitalized for weeks and months and came very close to death. In some cases, they will deal with the results of their food poisoning for the rest of their lives,” Reid says.

“One of the little girls I met is Rylee Gustafson from Henderson, Nevada. When she was 9 years old, she ate a salad that almost killed her. There was spinach in that salad, and E. coli in that spinach. Rylee got seriously ill. She was hospitalized and very luckily, she recovered. Three others who got E.coli from fresh spinach died,” he adds.

Reid went to the Senate floor just last week to urge Coburn, and other Republicans, to support food safety reform.

The bill Republicans are blocking would gives the FDA a mandate to inspect facilities and prevent contamination. The bill would:

Increase the inspections at all food facilities and requires annual inspections of high risk facilities.

Require the food industry to develop plans that identify hazards and implement the right preventive measures.

Enable the FDA to more effectively respond to an outbreak by giving the agency new authority to order recalls, shut down tainted facilities, and access records.

“It gives the FDA mandatory recall authority of contaminated foods. It sets up a system to allow FDA to keep track of food so we can find out where the contaminated food came from and quickly stop it from getting to grocery stores,” Reid says. “It strikes the right balance between assuring consumers that food is safe without over-burdening farmers with new regulations. And it makes no changes to the current Organic Program run by the US Department of Agriculture.”



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