Dick Durbin on Food Safety

Dick Durbin on Food Safety


Food Safety


I have been fighting for improved food safety standards for more than ten years. The recent recalls of tainted peanut butter, spinach, seafood, and pet food are only the latest examples of today's broken food safety system. Authority for regulating our nation's food supply is split among more than ten federal agencies. Most of these agencies lack the resources necessary to ensure the integrity of the food we consume.

I am working to secure increased resources for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food safety program, and I am the lead sponsor of several pieces of legislation designed to improve our food safety system. Among these bills is the Safe Food Act, which would streamline our food safety structure, improving coordination by combining the disparate food safety functions spread across the federal government into a single agency based on scientific principles. We also need to establish a robust system for overseeing the safety of imported food. I introduced legislation to strengthen the FDA's ability to monitor and inspect goods that enter the U.S. from abroad by imposing a fee on companies and countries exporting food products to the U.S. Consumers often take for granted that the food they purchase will be safe whether it originated in the U.S. or was imported, but the standards of other countries and the lack of U.S. food inspectors monitoring imported food too often proves them wrong.