FDA Food Safety Modernization Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this bill as a good and a necessary first step in reforming our food safety system and better protecting our families from food-borne illness. And I want to congratulate some of the longtime champions of food safety in this institution, such as Chairman Henry Waxman, Chairman John Dingell, Subcommittee Chairman Frank Pallone, Mr. Bart Stupak. And I say congratulations to them for successfully bringing this legislation through the House. I also want to acknowledge Senator Harkin and Senator Durbin for their work in facilitating passage of this bill in the Senate.

Among the critical reforms in this bill are increased inspection of high-risk facilities, expanded authority to inspect recall records, the formation of a more accurate food facility registry, improved traceability in the event of an illness outbreak, and improved surveillance of food-borne illness. The bill also requires certification of certain foreign food imports as meeting U.S. food safety requirements.

All of these tools will help improve the FDA's ability to respond to food-borne illness outbreaks and to hold industrial food production facilities to higher standards. For too long the cornerstone of our food safety system, the FDA, has had only ancient tools and an outdated mandate at its disposal. This bill will go a long way towards stemming the potential of a full-blown food-borne epidemic in the future. Recently, the CDC released an updated estimate on food-borne illness figures, and it remains a major public interest health threat. With nearly 50 million illnesses, 100,000 hospitalizations, and over 3,000 deaths each year, these estimates show that there is much work to be done in identifying and combating the pathogens that cause food-borne illness.

Just to tell you the importance of this bill, let me share with you the story of Haylee Berstein, a 17-year old girl who lives in Wilton, Connecticut. When Haylee was 3 years old, she ate unwashed lettuce that was contaminated with E. coli. She soon became extremely ill with what doctors called hemolytic uretic syndrome. The health effects of an E. coli illness are very painful. Haylee experienced traumatic damage to her kidneys and pancreas. She suffered severe bleeding in her brain. And that blood in her brain caused her to be temporarily blind. The doctors at Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital fought for 14 weeks to save her life. And to this day, Haylee still suffers from health problems such as diabetes, all because of food contaminated with E. coli. This should not happen to anyone. And as we know in this body, it can be prevented.

With all of this in mind, our food safety efforts should not, and will not, end today. Because this piece of legislation is not about roads and bridges and parks and other things that we do in this institution. This legislation is about life and death. While the FDA is charged with protecting a large majority of our food supply, the Food Safety and Inspection Service, FSIS at USDA, is responsible for ensuring the safety of meat and poultry products. After passing this bill today, we must begin to lay the foundation for science-based reform at FSIS as well. That is why I worked on language that would create a science-based panel, supported by a wide range of stakeholders, to analyze the food safety system at FSIS and develop the concept of what a modernized system would look like there.

This collaborative proposal is supported by the pertinent industries, consumer groups, and unions. I should emphasize that this plan would not interfere with the good work currently being done by Under Secretary Elisabeth Hagen at FSIS. And I look forward to working with all of my colleagues in the next Congress to move this proposal forward.

Ultimately, I believe, as do leaders across the aisle, that we must establish a single food safety agency. Currently, food safety responsibilities are fragmented across 15 Federal agencies and are governed by 71 interagency agreements. Food safety and public health experts, as well as the Government Accountability Office, have concluded that this fragmentation has created redundancies that have weakened our food safety response. We need to consolidate all of these food safety functions under one roof. This will provide an updated regulatory structure and strengthen oversight and surveillance activities to better protect our food supply.

I will continue to fight for this single agency. I believe it is needed to ensure that the food in our fridges and on our kitchen tables is safe. Nonetheless, the legislation we must pass today is a strong first step toward a safer food supply and reducing the number of preventable food-borne illnesses and deaths. I urge my colleagues to face this public health threat and to pass food safety legislation. Every parent who goes in to buy food needs to know that they are taking it home and it's safe for their children.

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