By TIM ALEXANDER
Illinois Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) helped introduce sweeping reform legislation last week that would grant the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) more power and resources to strengthen the agency’s food safety inspection system.

Durbin introduced the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act along with Senators Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.) on March 3. The bill is co-sponsored by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.).

“Over the last year we’ve seen major recalls of peanut butter spiked with salmonella, spinach laced with e-coli and chili loaded with botulism. These are not isolated incidents and are the result of an outdated, under-funded and overwhelmed food safety system,” Durbin said. “Today’s bipartisan bill will improve the FDA’s ability to prevent food-borne illness outbreaks and ensure FDA responds quickly and effectively when outbreaks do occur.”

Durbin spokesman Max Gleischman said the bill will strengthen the FDA’s food safety functions by granting them new and advanced authorities, new regulatory powers, new inspection powers and new funding authorization. Gleischman told Farm World the bill’s sponsors expect the Act to be the “main vehicle in any new food safety legislation in front of Congress this year.”

The bipartisan bill targets four areas of the FDA’s authorities and resources that are in need of restructuring: food-borne illness prevention, food-borne illness detection and response, food defense capabilities and “overall” resources. In order to help prevent food safety problems, the bill would require all food production facilities to establish preventive plans to address identified hazards and prevent adulteration, and to give FDA access to relevant documentation. Expanded access to records would be granted to the FDA in the event of a food emergency.

The bill also allows the FDA to enable qualified “third-party” food inspectors to inspect and certify foreign food facilities, and will raise the bar concerning quality standards and accreditation for all U.S. food testing labs. Importers of foreign food products would be required to verify the safety of the items, and the FDA would be granted the power to deny entry to a food item that lacks certification or from a foreign facility that has refused to allow U.S. inspectors into their factories.

Bill to improve inspections, surveillance

The FDA’s capacity to detect and respond to food-borne illness outbreaks would be enhanced through increased inspections and surveillance, mandatory recall power and beefed up suspension options.

The bill also requires the U.S. secretary of health and human services to establish a pilot project to test and evaluate new methods for tracking the origin of fruits and vegetables in the event of a food emergency.

A mandate to develop a new national strategy to protect our food supply from terrorism and develop more rapid responses to food emergencies is also contained in the bill. After being introduced by the Senators, the bill was assigned to the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee.

“The next step in the process will be for the HELP Committee to hold a hearing on the measure, and then the bill will move through regular order,” Gleischman said. “This bill is supported by a broad section of consumer groups, community groups, public health groups, the FDA themselves and a bipartisan group of senators. We feel very good about the strength of the bill and its prospects for passage.”

The bill strives to address head-on some of the issues surrounding January’s voluntary peanut butter recall, which came too late to prevent nine deaths and illnesses affecting over 650 consumers – half of which were children. Increasing the frequency of inspections at all food facilities, giving the FDA expanded access to records and testing results along with granting the FDA power to recall dangerous food products when a company fails to recall a product voluntarily would have drastically limited the scope of the outbreak, proponents of the bill assert.

Durbin is also co-sponsor of The Safe Food Act, which calls for the creation a single food safety organization to oversee and enforce food safety laws as well as establishing a national system for tracing food from the point of origin to retail level.