Durbin Proposes Reform of Nation's Food Safety System to Prevent Future E-Coli Outbreaks
DURBIN PROPOSES REFORM OF NATION'S FOOD SAFETY SYSTEM TO PREVENT FUTURE E-COLI OUTBREAKS
Friday, September 22, 2006
[CHICAGO, IL] - The threat of another E. coli outbreak in the nation's food supply could be substantially reduced if Congress acts quickly to approve legislation introduced by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL). Durbin was joined today at a news conference at the Chicago International Produce Market by Caroline Smith DeWaal, the director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest; Martin Cole, Director of the National Center for Food Safety and Technology; Brian Imus, State Director of the Illinois Public Interest Research Group; and Lynda DeLaforgue, Co-Director of Citizen Action.
Durbin's legislation, the Safe Food Act of 2005, is designed to ensure the safety of our nation's food supply by making one federal agency responsible for food safety monitoring. The legislation, as introduced, would include:
# Requiring food producers to code their products so that those products can be quickly traced in the event of a foodborne illness outbreak
# Requiring that food processing plants have procedures in place to prevent and reduce food contamination
# Requiring regular inspection of domestic food facilities with frequency based on risk
# Giving the FDA recall authority. If the food safety system is centralized in one agency, the agency could quickly respond to an outbreak
Under current U.S. law, food safety monitoring, inspection and labeling functions are spread across 12 federal agencies and sub-agencies including: the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service which regulates meat, poultry and processed egg products; the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and Center for Veterinary Medicine which regulates produce and other food products; and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which tracks foodborne illnesses.
"This mismatched, piecemeal approach to food safety could spell disaster if we do not act quickly and decisively," said Durbin. "That's why since 1997, I have been pushing for a single food safety agency with the authority to protect the food supply based on sound scientific principles."
Today, Durbin sent a letter to Mike Leavitt, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, asking for an update on the status of the outbreak and urging the Administration to support the creation of a single food safety agency. Durbin also wrote to Sen. Saxby Chambliss, Chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, urging him to hold a hearing on the Safe Food Act of 2005. Durbin also circulated a letter among his Senate colleagues urging them to support the bill.
Durbin also asked the Government Accountability Office to evaluate and recommend changes that should be made to our current food safety system in order to better contain, respond to and prevent future deadly outbreaks similar to the current E. coli outbreak. Next week, Durbin will meet with the nominee for FDA Commissioner, Andrew von Eschenbach, and will ask him how FDA plans to minimize future deadly outbreaks.
"The current E. coli outbreak points to serious, but correctable, weaknesses in our food safety system" Durbin said. "Quick action is needed at the federal level. Today, we have 12 different federal agencies stumbling over each other to ensure the safety of our food supply. Turf battles, overlap and inconsistencies are inevitable.
"One example of the inconsistencies in our food safety system is the lack of standardization for food inspections. Processed food facilities may be inspected by the FDA once every five or six years, while meat and poultry operations are inspected daily by USDA."
The CDC estimates that as many as 76 million people suffer from food poisoning each year. Of those individuals, approximately 325,000 will be hospitalized and more than 5,000 will die. Children and the elderly are especially vulnerable to foodborne pathogens.
http://durbin.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=263612&&