New York senator calls for produce tracking
The New York Senator not named Hillary Clinton has proposed that the Food and Drug Administration would operate an extensive tracing system for fresh produce. Under the proposal put forward by Democrat Charles Schumer, each carton of fresh fruits and vegetables would have a bar code with information on origin. What's more Schumer said Senate Democrats plan to reintroduce the Safe Food Act in 2007, a piece of legislation that would create a Food Safety Administration to oversee issues of food safety. Once these political dynamics begin in the next Congress, it will be a stout test of both the FDA and industry leadership to present a case that the current system - or the current system combined with new industry initiatives - is sufficient.
Labels: FDA
posted by Tom Karst @ 2:12 AM
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http://www.FederalDaily.com
‘Nothing Going Well,’ DHS Ag Inspectors Say
In a bleak assessment of workforce morale, a significant portion of former U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) employees transferred into the Department
of Homeland Security (DHS) say “nothing is going well,” when asked by government
auditors. A Government Accountability Office survey, whose results were published
Dec. 14, asked a series of work experience questions to a sample of the 1,800
specialists transferred from USDA to the newly created DHS Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) in March 2003. To the query on what is going well, 13 percent of
respondents said that “nothing is going well,” the report said. On an open-ended
question of what changes the specialists would like to see, they responded with
185 pages worth of suggestions. The top five things that those surveyed identified
as problems were 1) working relationships between agriculture specialists and
CBP non-agriculture inspectors and management (29%); 2) Priority missing from
the agriculture mission (29%); 3) Problems with CBP chain of command (28%);
4) Training in the classroom and on the job is inadequate (19%); and 5) Equipment
and supplies are inadequate (17%).
To see more, go to: www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-07-209R
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