Food safety flurry

Here is the link to the Web page that links to today's hearing by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on "Developing a Comprehensive Response to Food Safety." The page also provides a link to view the hearing and links all the testimony offered. The "witness" list":

Witness Testimony

Panel I

The Honorable Michael Leavitt, Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC
From Leavitt

Implementing the Import Action Plan and the Food Protection Plan will require resources, including reallocation of existing resources, as well as trade-offs, to fund these priorities. We plan to coordinate with Federal departments and agencies to carefully plan the implementation and submit funding needs through the normal budget process in February 2008 and in subsequent years. To the extent that additional statutory authority is needed to implement the Import Action Plan, we look forward to working with this Committee on import product safety legislation.

Panel II

Michael R. Taylor, Research Professor of Health Policy, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
From Taylor:

Congress should undertake a serious study of how to establish an adequate and stable funding base for FDA’s food safety program for the long-term. Just as it is fair to hold the food industry accountable for doing its food safety job, it is fair to hold FDA accountable for the leadership and effective action we expect from that agency, but only if it has an adequate and predictable resource base.

Paul Young, Ph.D, Senior Marketing Manager, Waters Corporation, Newtownards, N. Ireland
From Young:

It is clear that any food safety system which relies on voluntary compliance will be inherently risky, since even the very stringent systems employed by both the EU and Japan continue to give rise to a significant number of cases of violative food contamination (as published by each authority). Countries without unequivocal regulations governing the production of imported food run the risk of inviting the delivery of sub-standard products.

The Honorable Cal Dooley, President & Chief Executive Officer, Grocery Manufacturers Association, Washington, DC.
From Dooley:

Fourth, we urge you to take steps to continually improve the safety of food produced in the U.S. In particular, we urge you to provide FDA authority to mandate that produce be produced following good agricultural practices. Rising consumption of fruits and vegetables, including ready-to-eat foods, reflects growing consumer demand for healthier food choices but also creates new food safety challenges that should be addressed through strong and enforceable produce safety standards which can be tailored to reflect differences among commodities. Similarly, we support modernizing preventative controls for packaged food products to reflect scientific advances and thereby strengthen the foundational elements of our food safety system. We also support proposals to require facility registrations once every two years, as suggested in FDA’s Food Protection Plan, and we support increased frequency of facility inspections, provided that such inspections are based upon a scientific assessment of risk and upon history of compliance.


Caroline Smith DeWaal, Food Safety Director, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Washington, DC
Excerpt from Smith DeWaal:

FDA’s Food Protection Plan calls for several authorities that CSPI has long advocated, like mandatory recalls, and proposes changes to address shortcomings in the implementation of the Bioterrorism Act’s food facility registration program. But its shortcomings are numerous:
• It is not enough to ask for new authority to mandate recalls but fail to ask for authority to require traceability standards and impose civil penalties so that recalls are effective.
• It is not enough to require strict food security plans but fail to require food safety plans that would protect the public from the inadvertent contamination of food that annually sickens and kills so many Americans.
• It is not enough to identify a need for the full life-cycle approach to food safety but fail to ask for authority to implement programs on the farm or in the country of origin. In sum, the Food Protection Plan underscores the need for reform, but Congress must take stronger action if it is to ensure the safety of the food supply and protect Americans from preventable illnesses and deaths.

Joseph Corby, Director, New York Department of Agriculture & Markets, Albany, NY
From Corby:

The FDA Food Protection Plan and Action Plan for Import Safety are the latest efforts by the agency in setting strategies for protecting the nation’s food supply. These plans have great promise and both rely very heavily on working collaboratively with stakeholders including state and local agencies. The Action Plan for Import Safety speaks specifically for considering cooperative agreements with states. The Food Protection Plan uses less specific, more general language such as “collaboration with” and “working closely with” states in several areas of the document. In my opinion, FDA should strive to work more strategically with the states on a variety of functions including food safety inspections, food product surveillance, and imported food evaluations.