The food safety bill may or may not make it through Congress this year - but it is causing heart burn for some in agriculture. A Senate bill could raise production costs by forcing farmers and processors to continually test methods and products to ensure safety. FDA would also get access to internal business records.
Saxby Chambliss - Ranking Member of the Senate Ag Committee - says the bill unfairly sets a 500-thousand dollar threshold for small farmers…
“Fortunately, or fortunately, in my part of the world cotton today is selling for a dollar and a half a pound, a bale is 500 pounds, and it doesn’t take many bales to reach $500,000 in gross receipts, just from the sale of cotton, and that doesn’t count peanuts and wheat and corn, and whatever else may go along with it.”
But Chambliss says that’s not all…
“Even if they’re exempt as a small farmer, they still have a mandate of a huge amount of paperwork that has to go along with their production on an annual basis.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid countered that the bill keeps farm regulation to a minimum - but gives the FDA recall authority and other powers to stop dangerous foods from killing some five-thousand Americans every year…
“One out of four of us every gets sick. If 25 senators, a quarter of this senate got food poisoning this year, we’d do something about it, and we wouldn’t think twice about which political party those senators were that got sick.”
The bill - which if passed by the Senate would still have to be reconciled with a 2009 House-passed version - would require FDA to regularly inspect farms and food processing facilities. Lacking resources - the Agency inspected fewer than half the 51-thousand-plus facilities it now regulates between fiscal year 2004 and 2008.
The measure has wide support from major grower, food processor and retailer groups.
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