The US Senate, for the second time in less than a month, has passed legislation giving broad new powers to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to police food safety. If passed by the House of Representatives tomorrow as expected, and signed into law by President Barack Obama, who has voiced his support for the measure, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act will mark the most significant change to US food safety oversight in more than 70 years.
As we noted here, the Senate originally passed the bill on November 30th. But one day later, the bill washed up on the shoals of Congressional politics. House leaders pointed out that it included fees on food manufacturers and importers that could be defined as “revenues,” or taxes. Under the Constitution, any tax-containing legislation must originate in the House of Representatives. The House adjusted the fee language in the bill to avoid a similar outcome in the future and passed it agaiin, attaching it to a budget resolution funding the whole government. However that legislation later died in the Senate.
But yesterday, in a bit of legislative sleight-of-hand typical of the closing days of a Congress, the Senate inserted the revamped food safety bill into the gutted shell of an unrelated bill — a vector, if you like — that had originated in the House. Now, the bill’s roots in the House roots would provide cover just in case legislatively fastidious types there were still on the lookout for errant and overlooked tax-writing provisions.
Then, in a species of minor Christmas miracle, one senator who had been vowing to filibuster the bill – Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma — stepped aside, allowing the Senate to quickly approve the measure on a voice vote.
Passage is expected as soon as tomorrow in the House, which has already passed similar legislation twice in the current Congress.
The bill would allow FDA to order companies to recall tainted food; under current laws, it must request such recalls. It would also set minimum time intervals at which the agency must inspect US food manufacturing plants: once every five years at the outset for the high-risk faciltiies, increasing to once every three years after five years; and once every seven years at the outset for non-high-risk facilities, increasing to once every five years after seven years. The rate of foreign facility inspections would be significantly stepped up as well.
Manufacturers will have to develop and keep updated food safety plans in which they idenitfy possible hazards and show how they are preventing contamination from happening on an ongoing basis.
The bill “will lead to a preventive approach rather than an after the fact, clean-up-the-mess approach,” says Jean Halloran, the director of food policy initiatives at Consumers Union in New York, one of many groups that lobbied for passage of the legislation.
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