Farm, Nutrition, and Bioenergy Act of 2007 -- Continued

Floor Speech

FARM, NUTRITION, AND BIOENERGY ACT OF 2007--Continued -- (Senate - December 12, 2007)

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the pending amendment offered by friend and colleague Senator Kennedy.

This is an amendment that would make important changes to America's food safety policy.

We clearly need to make a change. For far too long, we have gone without a comprehensive review of our food safety laws.

Ancient statutes remain on the books, standards have not been updated, budgets have atrophied, and consumers have suffered from food borne illness.

In 2007, the Government Accountability Office, GAO, added the food safety system to its ``High Risk List'' of government functions that pose a risk to the United States.

The designation follows an extensive series of GAO, National Academies of Science, and inspector general reports calling for major improvements in our food safety system.

This year alone, we have witnessed 48 recalls of contaminated products regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA, Food Safety Inspection Service, FSIS, and more than 150 recalls of contaminated products regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, FDA.

Included in these statistics are recalls of more than 3 years of production of certain brands of peanut butter tainted with salmonella, a full year of production of ground beef tainted with E. coli, and more than 100 brands of popular cat and dog food.

In the past 2 months alone, there have been recalls of 5 million units of frozen pizza and 1 million more pounds of beef tainted with E. coli.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, there are approximately 76 million cases of food borne disease each year in the United States. While many of these cases are mild, CDC estimates that food borne illness causes 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths each year.

The food industry is one of the most important sectors of the national economy, generating more than $1 trillion in economic activity annually and employing millions of American workers.

Unfortunately, over the past several months, consumer confidence in the safety of our food supply has dropped precipitously, posing a risk to this sector of the economy.

According to the Food Marketing Institute's 2007 survey of consumer confidence, the number of consumers confident in the safety of supermarket food declined from 82 percent in 2006 to 66 percent today--the lowest point since 1989. The same survey shows that consumer confidence in restaurant food is even lower, at 43 percent.

Although the United States continues to have one of the safest food supplies in the world, the authorities and standards we set and the investments in food safety we make are being surpassed by other major industrialized nations.

A significant portion of the responsibility for this trend rests with Congress. While other countries have updated their food safety laws to reflect best available science, technology, and practices, we have allowed our statutes to become dated and obsolete.

We have underfunded this critical government function.

It is alarming that the safety of our food supply depends on ancient statutes that were written to address vastly different food safety challenges.

The Federal Meat Inspection Act was passed in 1906 partly in response to Upton Sinclair's accounts of Chicago's meat packing plants in his novel ``The Jungle.''

There has been only one major review of our meat laws and that occurred 40 years ago.

The Poultry Products Inspection Act celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and the Egg Products Inspection Act is more than 35 years old.

The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was passed in 1938 and has never been comprehensively reauthorized.

This is the key statute used by the Food and Drug Administration to regulate about 80 percent of our food supply.

Since then, although our understanding of food borne illness, preventative measures, microbiology, sanitation practices, and industry best practices has been transformed by developments in science and technology, the core principles of these statutes remain in place.

Into this void has stepped an uncoordinated, irregular sweep of crises-specific legislation, such as the Infant Formula Act of 1980 and Import Milk Act, as well as dozens of regulatory efforts to improve the safety of specific products.

Agencies have faced legal challenges as to whether they have the authority to implement some of these regulations.

It is time that Congress stepped forward to exercise oversight and ensure that we comprehensively improve our food safety system.

That is why my colleague Senator Kennedy and I are offering an amendment to the farm bill that would set a trajectory toward a comprehensive review of the laws that underpin our food safety system.

Although food safety is one of the most dynamic functions of the federal government and relies heavily on developments in science, technology, and best practices, there is no mechanism for Congress to regularly review developments and reauthorize the agencies that perform these tasks.

Already included in the bill we're considering is language that would create a Food Safety Commission, a mechanism for Congress, the administration, academia, industry, consumer groups, and others to work together on comprehensive food safety reform and recommend specific statutory language.

The Commission is tasked with studying the in our current system and making specific legislative recommendations to the President and Congress on how to improve our laws.

We have directed the Commission to do its work based on universally agreed upon principles--allocate resources according to risk, base policies on best available science, improve coordination of budgets and personnel.

This amendment goes further than that language. It directs the President to review these recommendations and findings and report his or her recommendations back to Congress in a timely fashion.

The language puts Congress on a track of holding hearings and moving such comprehensive food safety reform through the process.

Lastly, the language contains sense-of-the-Senate language that it is the policy of the U.S. Senate to provide our food safety functions with adequate resources, that we increase the number of inspectors looking at food shipments, and that it is vital for Congress to move forward with comprehensive food safety reform.

This amendment will compel the participation of all stakeholders in the Commission process and will compel Congress and the Administration to act on its recommendations.

I offer this amendment and ask for my colleagues to support this effort to modernize our food safety system.

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