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If America is to make its food safer, who should do the job?
That question has provoked a debate in Congress pitting reformers bent on preventing disease outbreaks — like those that recently led to peanut, beef and spinach recalls — against skeptical farmers, livestock producers and environmentalists.
At issue is a bill, the Food Safety Enhancement Act, that would move oversight of farms from the Agriculture Department to the Food and Drug Administration.
That idea drew a chorus of objections from farm groups at a hearing Thursday before the House Agriculture Committee, which decided the bill needed more work before it could be advanced.
The measure, although overshadowed by the much louder debate over health care, has been plowing forward, fed by consumer fears that deadly outbreaks of salmonella, E. coli and other food-borne pathogens will recur.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee endorsed the bill last month.
Both the USDA and the FDA favor the bill's shift of regulatory power. So do several consumer groups, arguing that responsibility for food safety — from field to table — must be strengthened and concentrated in one agency.
The USDA now oversees most farms but regulates safety only for meat, poultry and eggs. The FDA has oversight over other food but generally has not extended its reach to farms.
Several Nebraska and Iowa farm groups, while careful to endorse the goal of safer food, voiced doubt that the FDA has the experience or manpower to oversee the diversity of U.S. agriculture — big farms and small ones, livestock and crops, niche operations and organic growers.
“We're very concerned about the FDA stepping into that role,” said Michael Kelsey, executive vice president of the Nebraska Cattlemen. The goal, said Keith Olsen, president of the Nebraska Farm Bureau Federation, ought to be “sensible” rules fitted to each commodity. For instance, he said, trying to track corn or wheat — the crops he grows near Grant, Neb. — from each farm to the consumer wouldn't be practical.
The Iowa Pork Producers Association, too, said it favored keeping regulatory power where it is. Spokesman Ron Birkenholz said the FDA still can extend its reach to farms when the issue is food but should leave livestock matters to the USDA.
The Nebraska Farmers Union, which advocates for family-owned operations, sees a USDA-to-FDA transfer as perhaps a leap from frying pan to fire, President John Hansen said.
“We've never been a fan of the current system … which is basically self-reporting,” he said, but the USDA is the agency better positioned to improve inspections and devise “ounce of prevention” rules.
Others testifying at Thursday's hearing said the bill could conflict with organic growing methods and trump efforts to improve wildlife habitat.
Small produce growers say they are not the problem. Organic growers fear new rules might require production techniques they shun.
Nicolas Maravell, a small organic farmer in Maryland, said the practice of raising livestock and food on the same farm is discouraged under current FDA guidelines. If it were mandated, he said, that would jeopardize sustainable farming methods.
“This is a fast-moving train,” Maravell said. “Nobody wants to stand in front of legislation that has the words ‘food safety' in it.”
The committee chairman, Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., highlighted the issue's political urgency by noting people in the audience whose relatives died from eating tainted food.
Peterson said he would work out a consensus among lawmakers — Iowa's Steve King and Leonard Boswell and Nebraska's Jeff Fortenberry and Adrian Smith also are on the committee — or block the bill.
Fortenberry said that while the nation needs a safe food supply, “We must be careful, at the same time, to promote safe practices without creating unnecessary burdens for responsible producers.”
Every year, one in four Americans is sickened by food, and about 5,000 die, according the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although lawmakers tout the nation's food supply as the safest in the world, the CDC has said food safety is no longer improving.
This report includes material from the San Francisco Chronicle and McClatchy Newspapers.
Contact the writer:
444-1140, roger.buddenberg@owh.com
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