World Food Crisis

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Senate Passed Food Safety Bill - 12/20/2010
http://www.nwyc.com/explore.cfm/news/100072

The Senate passed a comprehensive food safety bill by voice vote Sunday night, sending it back to the House to clear for the president’s signature.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) gave the legislation new life by stripping language of a bill (HR 2751) originally written to aid consumer recycling and inserting the text of the Senate-passed food safety bil (S 510).

Reid said the bill was an “extremely important” step in preventing food-borne illnesses that can disable or kill consumers.

The quick passage came as a bit of a surprise after speculation centered on the Democrats possibly adding the food safety legislation to a spending measure.

“It’s not dead yet,” Majority Whip Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-IL), author of the Senate food safety bill, said Sunday afternoon. Sen. Michael B. Enzu (R-WY), ranking Republican on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, also said efforts to keep the measure alive were continuing.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said he would block any spending measure that included food safety, and Republicans have said they want a clean bill.

Placing the food safety measure into a non-spending bill skirted those potential hurdles.

The Food Safety legislation would expand Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority and empower the agency to order mandatory recalls and has bipartisan support in both chambers. The Senate passed its bill last month with 73 votes, and clearing it in the House appeared to be a formality.

The House passed a companion food safety bill in 2009. Rep. John D. Dingell (D-MI), sponsor of the House bill, stated frustration over the weekend over the legislation being trapped in a Senate procedural maze.

“This bill has been laying over in the Senate for 17 months,” he said. “The result of doing nothing is millions of Americans getting sick, hundreds of thousands being hospitalized and thousands more dying every year. How many more are going to have to get sick, be hospitalized and die before the Senate takes action on a bill that passed overwhelmingly in the House and Senate with support of the industry and consumers?”

Reid said that an overhaul of food safety laws was long overdue and would reassure Americans that the food they eat is safe.

“This is a common-sense issue with broad bipartisan support,” he said, “Tonight we unanimously passed a measure to improve on our current food safety system by giving the FDA the resources it needs to keep up with advances in food production and marketing, without unduly burdening farmers and food producers.”