Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) introduced the “Safe Food Act of 2015” at a recent launch event. The Act was then simultaneously introduced to both houses, with a vote expected over the coming weeks. The idea behind the bill is to create a single, independent food safety agency, designed to replace the multitude of mismatched and competing national and state level agencies.
In the U.S., at the moment, food safety oversight is divided between 15 different agencies. This, arguably, creates state of confusion where no single philosophy or program informs the food industry, retailers or consumers. The risk is that consumers suffer from unsafe food production processes and this is the primary reason why the two Democratic Party politicians are proposing unification. The Act seeks to introduce a newly constituted Food Safety Administration authority equipped with the powers to recall unsafe food; demand that food producers complete safety risk assessments together with preventive control plans in order to avoid food contamination.
Whilst the idea may have merit, this is not the first time that the two politicians have attempted to consolidate food safety measures in the U.S. They proposed similar legislation four times between 1999 and 2007. The previous attempts have fallen due to vested interests in the other agencies or due to concerns from the food industry about over regulation.
Describing their motivation behind the 2015 bill, Durbin stated: “The fragmented nature of our food safety system has left us more vulnerable to the risk of foodborne illness. It has too often forced citizens to go it alone in the case of outbreak. The Safe Food Act…would transfer and consolidate food safety authorities for inspections, enforcement, labeling, and research into a single food safety agency. That would allow us to prioritize system-wide food safety goals and targets. It would also help families navigate the differing federal, state, and local food safety agencies to get the answers they deserve.”
Importantly, the new agency, if formed, would be independent of any government department. The proposers also expect that the costs of running the new body would be considerably lower.
Expanding on the measures further, DeLauro went onto explain: “Government has a moral responsibility to keep our families safe from foodborne illness. One reason we have not been able to do so is that our food safety system is hopelessly fragmented and outdated.”
She then added: “Consequently, lives are unnecessarily put at risk and the need for reform becomes more urgent…We need a commonsense, 21st century way of ensuring food safety and a single food safety agency is it.”
If agreed, the Safe Food Act would have the powers to:
Transfer and consolidate food safety authorities for inspections, enforcement and labeling into a single food safety agency,
Provide authority to require the recall of unsafe food,
Require risk assessments and preventive control plans to reduce adulteration (this includes the use of risk management and risk assessment tools),
Authorize enforcement actions to strengthen contaminant performance standards (moving away from voluntary self-regulation),
Improve foreign food import inspections (where the concern is with food shipped in from overseas markets),
Require full food traceability to better identify sources of outbreaks, as with cases of food poisoning.
