Stenzel testimony

This testimony by Tom Stenzel was expected to delivered this afternoon before the House Agricultural Appropriations Subcommittee.

Amy Philpott reported in an email that the hearing will focus on the "broken food safety system" and begins with testimony from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on its latest report recommending comprehensive reform to food safety.

Philpott notes others before the committee: The American Meat Institute, Consumer Federation of America, and a former USDA/FDA official now at the University of Maryland.


What did Stenzel say? He says a ton, and it is well reasoned. For me, the following is an important point that Stenzel makes about the risk of federal authorities overreaching and overregulating in this earnest push for food safety legislation.

This will be an extremely important point moving forward. The FDA has to be careful that broad strokes do not result in requirements that should not apply to specific commodities, and do nothing to enhance safety. Taking a general approach would be far too easy to add regulatory costs and burdens to sectors where those requirements are unneeded, without doing anything to enhance safety where most critical.


Meanwhile, subcommittee chair woman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. gave her remarks here.

In all, there have been 10 GAO reports on serious problems in our food safety system since 2000 alone. We have seen this problem coming.
“But this hearing will not be about assigning blame. Rather, our goal here is simple – oversight. And as you can see from the chart behind us, with 15 different agencies operating under 30 separate laws responsible for regulating the safety of our food— with 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths from food-related illnesses each year—the need for meticulous congressional oversight is clear.