Posted on 07/31/2009 1:03:55 AM PDT by Jet Jaguar
The House has passed a far-reaching food safety bill requiring more government inspections and imposing new penalties on those who violate the law, reacting strongly to an outbreak of salmonella in peanuts that killed at least nine people.
The legislation would require greater oversight of food manufacturers and give the Food and Drug Administration new authority to order recalls. It also would require the FDA to develop a system for better tracing food-borne illnesses. Food companies would be required to create detailed food safety plans.
President Barack Obama praised the bill soon after it was passed, calling it "a major step forward in modernizing our food safety system."
Democrats scrambled to put the legislation back on the House floor Thursday under a rule that required a simple majority to pass. The vote was 283-142.
Supporters said the legislation would help the FDA change its focus from a reactive to a more preventive approach in keeping the nation's food safe.
"Americans are dying because the Food and Drug Administration doesn't have the authority to protect them," said Michigan Rep. John Dingell, the bill's sponsor and a long-serving Democrat who has been pushing for tougher standards for more than a decade.
A similar bill sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., has not yet seen action in the Senate.
The legislation gained new momentum in the wake of one of the largest product recalls in U.S. history, stemming from salmonella in peanuts that killed nine people, sickened hundreds of others and was linked to shoddy practices at a peanut company in Georgia. Other recent outbreaks include contaminated spinach in 2006 and salmonella in peppers last year. The government estimates that 76 million people each year are sickened by food-borne illness, hundreds of thousands are hospitalized and around 5,000 die.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
With this being a Rat plan, there has to be at least a hundred things done wrong in it.
Here they go again.Another bad bill.
If vague memory serves, this plan was going to kill farmers’ markets and other small time local operations that can’t tag each apple and cucumber or buy the specialized tracking software.
As well as raise the price of everything in the supermarket
Any government powerful enough to protect you from all perceived ills is also powerful enough to do whatever it wants to you, including kill you. And once the corrupt politicians have that power, THEY WILL USE IT.
Anyone who thinks that is paranoia is an abject moron with no understanding of history. Thanks again, NEA...
Just another socialist power grab by the rats in the name of the good of the people...
Has anybody sat down and figured out how much food borne illness would be stopped by these schemes, best case. I’d wager that almost all food borne illness comes not from a contaminated source but from mishandling at point of use. One possible plus is that this (if done right) would make it easier to combat attempts to sabotage a major food source, as in terrorism.
There goes the local food movement, mostly liberals loved the local food movement.... organic farms? buh bye to most of them.
“With this being a Rat plan, there has to be at least a hundred things done wrong in it.”
Undoubtedly. How many pubics voted FOR this?
Probably part of the Health Kill Bill.
Unbelievable.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2749
His poll numbers will be -40 by Monday.
You know, large agri-businesses are in bed with the government as they can absorb the costs of regulations and pass those costs on, while destroying their local competition; in turn the government gets a more dependent populace.
Because this bill will put great financial burdens on small farmers and producers, local food sources will quickly stop selling and growing. Food will be controled by large ‘ag groups’ (monsanto,adm,con-agra). Food is now a commodity like oil,gas,and water.
Every major food problem concerning safety in recent years has come from major ‘factory farms’, sent through nationwide distribution systems. This bill will increase that risk.
Local food produced and sold in regional rather than nation-wide systems would greatly reduce the risk of national risks to our food supply. (drought, germ infestations,terrorism. This bill will do just the opposite.
By the way; The congresswoman who sponsored the bill was Rosa deloro. Her husband is the leading lobbyist for Monsanto.
They can have my zucchini when they pry it from my cold, dead hands!
prisoner6
All this shows is that even with 30 agencies, the Gov could not manage food safety, but it could kill an industry with paperwork. We do not a DMV of food.
If the people of the US want a food safety agency, so be it. But if 15 can't get it done, 16 is not the answer. The answer is firing the fifteen and starting over with one that had better get it right with a small team and efficient methods, or it will join its 15 friends on the unemployment line.
How much cost will this add to our food? Isn't food expensive enough already?
I can already hear it now, 6 months or a year, or whatever amount of time when this has had it's chance to be implemented and food costs rise as a result, members of congress will get up and start complaining about gouging as if they are innocent bystanders.
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