Washington Calls for a Single Regulatory Agency for Food

I'm not sure that the lawmakers quoted know exactly what they are talking about (funny that they think the passage of FSMA changed anything). That said, as a frozen pizza manufacturer who has to juggle both USDA and FDA depending on whether we put a fully cooked IQF sausage crumble on the pizza...

Yes Please.

Washington Calls for a Single Regulatory Agency for Food

By Staff

Lawmakers are talking about what the food industry itself has bantered about for years: creating a single food safety agency, bringing together the oversight functions of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other agencies.

Democratic Senator Richard Durbin from Illinois and Democratic Representative Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut said the bill would create a single federal agency with an administrator directly appointed by the President.

Introduced as the Safe Food Act of 2015, the bill was co-sponsored by 10 other Democrats and would elevate food safety as a national priority, important as the U.S. food supply continues to source food globally.

"The fragmented Federal food safety system and outdated laws preclude an integrated, system-wide approach to preventing foodborne illness," it says.

Currently most of the responsibility for food safety lies with FDA. USDA oversees meat, poultry and processed eggs.

The bill would merge food safety oversight into a single agency, providing authority to recall unsafe food and improve inspections of imported food.

The purpose of the proposed bill is to build on the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSNA), which was signed into law in January 2011. The focus of FSMA is on prevention of foodborne illness by contaminated food instead of response to such events.

Lawmakers said greater public awareness of food safety makes this an opportune time to initiate change. While the costs for creating a single agency were not discussed, the new agency would save money over time by improving efficiency.

DeLauro said that until the passage of FSMA, "the whole issue of food safety was a step-child at the FDA."

FDA has not commented on the proposed legislation.

http://www.foodsafet...gency-for-food/

 

More bureaucracy.  It doesn't replace both agencies, it doesn't consolidate the agencies we have, it creates a new one and takes only the oversight away from both of them.  meanwhile it creates a new 500k + a year job for one of the friends of the current President of the United States and a whole ton of more government employees.  Meanwhile drugs still have to be overseen so FDA will still have oversight responsibility.  I'm sure there is other things USDA oversees... so they will still need to oversee those things.

And people wonder why their taxes are so high.  How about the Food And Drug Administration absorb the USDA... you know seeing as food is a major part of agriculture... and not make ANOTHER new agency to pad friends paychecks?

Yeah, I tend to agree with Mr. I.

More, bigger gov't does not mean better. I would like to see the Food side of the FDA merge with the USDA and Drug aspect to stand alone. The should be a uniform voice for what is happening with food, whether it be meat, eggs, or spinach.  This is all the worst that Washington has to offer. 

S.287 - Safe Food Act of 2015

https://www.congress...e-bill/287/text

This bill should be available to read soon.  It was proposed to the senate floor by Dick Durban on 1/28/15. I'd like to try to look through it before I start calling senators and telling them how dumb the idea is.

Agreed. More government is NOT a good idea. FSMA was passed into law 4 years ago and we are still waiting to find out how it's going to be implemented. 

Marshall