Durbin's Food Safety Amendment Included in Final Version of FDA Reauthorization Approved by House Today

Press Release

Durbin's Food Safety Amendment Included in Final Version of FDA Reauthorization Approved by House Today

The United States House of Representatives today approved the final version of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, S.1082, commonly referred to as the FDA Reauthorization bill that came out of conference negotiations late last night. The Senate version passed on May 9, 2007, included Durbin's amendment, which was passed unanimously. While the House version did not have a counterpart to Durbin's proposal, it was included in the final version, negotiated last night and voted on by the House today. The final version will come to the Senate for a vote sometime within the next few days and then will go to the President for his signature.

"With the passage of today's legislation, companies will have to report food contamination incidences quickly and thoroughly," said Durbin. "With the passage of this new proposal, companies will have to notify FDA of contaminants within 24 hours and will be penalized if they fail to comply. There is more work to be done to fix our food safety system, but today we have moved forward to address the growing concerns across our nation."

Durbin's amendment includes some of the strongest food safety provisions enacted into law in the past five years. Most significantly, the amendment creates a requirement that companies must rapidly report contaminations of the food supply within 24 hours of determining it has a problem. This reporting requirement also gives the FDA the authority to require companies to do an investigation, issue additional reports, and notify affected parties in the supply chain. Companies that fail to report incidents, falsify reports, or comply with follow-up FDA requirements would be subject to civil and criminal penalties.

The food safety provisions in this bill will result in faster recalls, alerts, and notifications through the supply chain. Contaminated products will be tracked and removed from the supply chain earlier and faster. Recalls will be more targeted to specific lots and batches of contaminated products. Overall, this should significantly improve FDA's ability to protect human health from foodborne illnesses.

In addition to the new reporting requirement, the bill also establishes an early warning and notification system for pet food, provides for better, more uniform pet food safety standards, improves Federal-State coordination with regard to food safety, directs FDA to improve its communications efforts during recalls, requires FDA to issue more detailed reports to Congress on inspections, and includes a Sense of the Congress that states that it is imperative that Congress pursue comprehensive food safety reform.

Senator Durbin has been actively engaged on food safety issues for over a decade. This Congress he introduced legislation that calls for the development of a single food safety agency and the implementation of a food safety program to standardize American food safety activities (The Safe Food Act - S. 654). Senator Durbin has also worked to increase funding for the FDA and recently introduced legislation to direct FDA to collect user fees on imported food products.

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