The House Food Safety Bill in Brief

categories: Farm Economics, Food Safety, Policy, Politics

Published August 01, 2009 @ 02:19PM PT

US Capitol against a morning sky; by kimberlyfaye First, the food safety bill wasn't going to pass. Then it did.

The Agriculture Committee, including the ranking minority member, has had a great deal of input apparently, and they are well satisfied.

Eddie Gehman Kohan of Obamafoodorama, writing at Civil Eats, notes again the importance of putting the force of law behind food recalls. Now, even recalls involving deadly bacterial contamination, such as recent E. coli scares, are entirely voluntary and do not require retailers to stop selling products that may be affected.

The Consumers Union is pleased and Rep. Henry Waxman has given his assurances that the bill isn't intended to interfere with standard organic practices or the maintenance of on-farm biodiversity.

Nonetheless, as LaVidaLocavore's Jill Richardson points out, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition has ongoing concerns about the flat facility fees that won't fund the program but will mostly end up collecting fees from the greater number of small processing facilities that exist. Further, that organic farmers won't be exempted from following new standards that contradict with established organic practices, potential barriers to farm-to-institution provisioning, traceability exemptions for products that are identified by origin all the way to the consumer and the likelihood that product-specific exemptions have been handed out unfairly.

The Washington Post has an overview of the main provisions, which include an increase in the frequency of FDA inspections at high risk processing facilities.

Hopefully, they'll rub the burrs off in the Senate, but there's some important things in this bill.

(Photo credit: kimberlyfaye on Flickr.)

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Comments (3)

Well, I don't agree with all of this bill, but it's a good start.

Posted by L.S. hope on 08/02/2009 @ 10:45PM PT
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A good read of the present politcal/sociological situation surrounding food.

http://agbios.com/main.php?action=ShowNewsItem&id=10884

Posted by Robert Wager on 08/04/2009 @ 09:27AM PT
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Good start, you must not be an organic farmer. Yep all the distractions over health care reform will allow the passage of bills that will place small farms and food establishments at a competitive disadvantage with big agriculture.

But I guess the change we are getting is simply more of the same and concentrating power in the hands of the corporation and their minions who dream up this legislation.

Posted by john weibel on 08/22/2009 @ 10:47PM PT
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Natasha is an amateur eater with severe snarkolepsy and a c. 2002 blogging habit. She had a fabulous time studying ecological agriculture and policy at The Evergreen State College, and even did her homework while writing at various times for pacificviews.org, boomantribune.com, and mydd.com.