Here’s my latest column from The Tufts Daily. The FDA needs help, and I am disappointed in Sen. Harry Reid for tabling groundbreaking legislation that would help make our food safer.
Enjoy!
On Feb. 11, 2009, I wrote a column titled “Foodemics” about national food epidemics — clever portmanteau, right? In the column, I talked about the E.coli outbreak in spinach in September 2006, the salmonella scare in tomatoes in the summer of 2008 and instances in January 2009 when mercury was found in brand−name products containing high−fructose corn syrup. In the year since I wrote that column, few things have changed. There was a massive recall of peanut products by the Peanut Corporation of America throughout 2009, and a February 2010 recall of products containing hydrolyzed vegetable protein, a flavor−enhancing chemical, will cause hundreds of products to be taken off of our grocers’ shelves.
Many of these foodemics and recalls have happened as a result of people getting sick from the contaminated product. Yet as more and more food issues are popping up, food manufacturers and purveyors are voluntarily recalling products that they think may be contaminated. The latest voluntary recall hit close to home. On April 17, supermarket chains Giant Food, LLC and Stop & Shop Supermarket Co. LLC — which has stores in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, New York and New Jersey and is based in Quincy, Mass. — announced that they are recalling their store brands of frozen artichoke and spinach dip because the companies are afraid that they are contaminated with the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes.
While it is prudent for companies to take these preventative measures, I can also understand why it causes panic in consumers. The dip recall, for example, is another instance of a product containing spinach that has potentially fatal bacteria in it. We are left with a situation in which there are food−borne illnesses popping up with increasing frequency, corporations are trying to protect their consumers by issuing recalls without completely discrediting their businesses and making it seem like they have unsafe practices, and with each new recall, the general public is becoming more and more concerned about food production in the United States.
Sounds like we need someone to regulate all of this, don’t we?
But wait! How could I forget about the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)? Isn’t it the FDA’s responsibility to regulate and monitor food safety and production? I completely forgot about the FDA!
I’m pretty sure that until recently, Congress had also forgotten about the FDA, at least the “F” part. Formed in 1906, most of the laws granting the FDA its power to regulate the safety of food and drugs come from the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938. Every few years there is new legislation passed by Congress to reform or expand the FDA, mostly by amending the 1938 law. The latest set of changes, the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 (FDAAA), significantly revamped the way the FDA certifies drugs — this massive piece of legislation only addressed the “D” part of the FDA.
There have been outcries for years that instead of amending the laws governing the FDA, the federal government just needs to create an entirely new organization — preferably one that splits food and drug regulation into two different entities. With new legislation that finally addresses the “F” part of the FDA system, this is essentially what Congress is trying to do.
H.R. 875, also known as the Food Safety Modernization Act, passed the House of Representatives in July 2009, and it does to food regulation what the FDAAA did to drug regulation. The bill would create the Food Safety Administration (FSA) within the Department of Health and Human Services (the Cabinet department that already contains the FDA). The FSA would be an organization specifically devoted to issues related to food−borne illnesses, such as food security, food inspections and promoting research to study contaminants. The bill also gives the FSA direct power to take action against companies that do not take adequate preventative measures against food−borne illnesses. The Secretary of Health and Human Services would have the ability to suspend the federal registration of a food manufacturer or distributor that does not meet the new inspection and prevention requirements, and will also, in conjunction with the Secretary of Agriculture, create a National Agriculture and Food Defense Strategy.
The bill is not merely punitive toward food companies, but also allocates resources that would allow the FSA to assist local and state governments and businesses in recovering from food and safety issues, such as epidemics and recalls. In essence, the Food Safety Modernization Act does not merely amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, but it creates an entirely new system.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee unanimously passed its own version of the legislation in November. It seemed that everything was on track for the bill to pass through the Senate quickly — just last week, countless news sources were reporting that with the Senate back from its spring recess, the bill would quickly make it through to President Barack Obama’s desk by May.
As of Friday, however, the bill is no longer a main course on the Senate’s menu. Representatives from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office told The Wall Street Journal that other legislation, such as the financial regulations bill that will bring reform to Wall Street, as well as five nominations are going to take precedence over the Food Safety Modernization Act.
This is just another example of our legislature forgetting about the “F” part of the FDA. The Food Safety Modernization Act has bipartisan support, while the financial overhaul does not. I’m worried that Wall Street reform will stall on the floor of the Senate, leaving food safety to be dealt with after the Senate’s Memorial Day recess. I understand that this is a legislature that recently has dealt with its fair share of large−scale federal reform between legislation on finance and health care, but if there is something that Congress can finally agree on, why is it being tossed aside? This country desperately needs federal food reform, and hopefully it will not take another devastating foodemic for the Senate to take this off of the back burner.
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