Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan issued a press release announcing a new initiative - “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” to “begin a national conversation to help develop local and regional food systems and spur economic opportunity.”
Deputy Secretary Merrigan chairs the new initiative through a task force with representatives from several USDA agencies. USDA will announce approximately $65 million in funding for 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' initiatives.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Commentary of the Food Safety Enhancement Act
I received the following email from a food policy listserv. It addresses the topic of whether the current drafts of the new food safety legislation will be unfair to small food processors. I received permission to post it from the author, David Plunkett.
The Food Safety Enhancement Act is about building safety into the production of all food that is offered for sale to the public and is designed to protect public health. Even so, it is somewhat surprising to see the bill described as treating all food processors the same. In one sense that may be true. All food processors will have to plan for safety. That is not a bad thing, though. Whether the processor is selling a premium product (like artisan cheese) to a few customers, or mass marketing cheese to thousands of customers, every consumer has an expectation that the people who produce food for us are taking measures to ensure that food is safe.
On another level, though, the bill is anything but a one-size-fits all measure. Each food processor is responsible for reviewing potential hazards (such as the potential of Listeria Monocytogenes contamination of cheese) that are likely to be present in the food it makes. From that review, a processor is to design controls that will prevent, eliminate or reduce the hazard (such as maintaining proper temperatures and aging cheese appropriately). Each control is then monitored by the processor. These are steps that build safety into the processing of food, and that every processor regardless of size should take to ensure products are safe. Since the processor identifies the hazards, designs the controls and does the monitoring, each processor can match the safety measure to the size of the plant and/or volume of production. Claims that food safety plans are difficult to develop and complex are unfounded and speculative. The Europeans have been requiring all food processors to follow the same steps of hazard analysis, implementing critical control points and monitoring for years and, to my knowledge, have not found it to put undue burdens on artisan food suppliers.
Not only does the Food Safety Enhancement Act call for each food processor to design a system best suited to ensuring the safety of its product, the bill also phases in the requirement to have a food safety plan so that small and very small companies will have up to three years to develop and implement their plans. Also, FDA is required to consider the impact of any regulations on these companies and provide assistance to them in complying with the safety requirements. These steps are designed to preserve artisan, small, and very small processors by easing the transition to a modern food safety system focused on preventing illnesses.
Artisan foods offer many qualities such as taste, nutritional depth, sustainability, etc. that mass produced products cannot. But these qualities are not necessarily safety attributes. If safety is not built into the process, then artisan food processors have the same capacity to make their customers sick as mass producers. The fact that they have fewer customers isn't going to make a difference to the people who suffer an illness that was preventable, and that can be life threatening or lead to long-term health problems.
The $500 registration fee may apply to some larger artisan food processors. (However, keep in mind that artisan food processors can be subsidiaries of very large companies, because the term is not defined in law. This creates a problem for crafting an exemption from the fee.) Not every small processor will have to pay the fee. A small processor may fall under the retail food establishment exemption. This exemption applies to any processor who sells more than half of the food it processes directly to consumers. Meanwhile, Congress has attempted to address the potential adverse affect of the fee on small processors. The registration fee has been reduced from $2,000 when the bill was first introduced to $1,000 and now $500. Since the bill has not passed either the House or Senate, it is possible further changes may be made to the fee structure. However, one of the problems the bill attempts to address is that of providing adequate funding for FDA to carry out its food safety mission.
It is true that we need to establish a system for preventing food-borne illnesses caused by mass-marketed foods. But everyone who produces food for sale to the public has a responsibility to do so with the safety of the consumer as a primary concern.
_____________________________
David W. Plunkett, J.D., J.M.
Senior Staff Attorney, Food Safety Program
Center for Science in the Public Interest
1875 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20009-5728
The Food Safety Enhancement Act is about building safety into the production of all food that is offered for sale to the public and is designed to protect public health. Even so, it is somewhat surprising to see the bill described as treating all food processors the same. In one sense that may be true. All food processors will have to plan for safety. That is not a bad thing, though. Whether the processor is selling a premium product (like artisan cheese) to a few customers, or mass marketing cheese to thousands of customers, every consumer has an expectation that the people who produce food for us are taking measures to ensure that food is safe.
On another level, though, the bill is anything but a one-size-fits all measure. Each food processor is responsible for reviewing potential hazards (such as the potential of Listeria Monocytogenes contamination of cheese) that are likely to be present in the food it makes. From that review, a processor is to design controls that will prevent, eliminate or reduce the hazard (such as maintaining proper temperatures and aging cheese appropriately). Each control is then monitored by the processor. These are steps that build safety into the processing of food, and that every processor regardless of size should take to ensure products are safe. Since the processor identifies the hazards, designs the controls and does the monitoring, each processor can match the safety measure to the size of the plant and/or volume of production. Claims that food safety plans are difficult to develop and complex are unfounded and speculative. The Europeans have been requiring all food processors to follow the same steps of hazard analysis, implementing critical control points and monitoring for years and, to my knowledge, have not found it to put undue burdens on artisan food suppliers.
Not only does the Food Safety Enhancement Act call for each food processor to design a system best suited to ensuring the safety of its product, the bill also phases in the requirement to have a food safety plan so that small and very small companies will have up to three years to develop and implement their plans. Also, FDA is required to consider the impact of any regulations on these companies and provide assistance to them in complying with the safety requirements. These steps are designed to preserve artisan, small, and very small processors by easing the transition to a modern food safety system focused on preventing illnesses.
Artisan foods offer many qualities such as taste, nutritional depth, sustainability, etc. that mass produced products cannot. But these qualities are not necessarily safety attributes. If safety is not built into the process, then artisan food processors have the same capacity to make their customers sick as mass producers. The fact that they have fewer customers isn't going to make a difference to the people who suffer an illness that was preventable, and that can be life threatening or lead to long-term health problems.
The $500 registration fee may apply to some larger artisan food processors. (However, keep in mind that artisan food processors can be subsidiaries of very large companies, because the term is not defined in law. This creates a problem for crafting an exemption from the fee.) Not every small processor will have to pay the fee. A small processor may fall under the retail food establishment exemption. This exemption applies to any processor who sells more than half of the food it processes directly to consumers. Meanwhile, Congress has attempted to address the potential adverse affect of the fee on small processors. The registration fee has been reduced from $2,000 when the bill was first introduced to $1,000 and now $500. Since the bill has not passed either the House or Senate, it is possible further changes may be made to the fee structure. However, one of the problems the bill attempts to address is that of providing adequate funding for FDA to carry out its food safety mission.
It is true that we need to establish a system for preventing food-borne illnesses caused by mass-marketed foods. But everyone who produces food for sale to the public has a responsibility to do so with the safety of the consumer as a primary concern.
_____________________________
David W. Plunkett, J.D., J.M.
Senior Staff Attorney, Food Safety Program
Center for Science in the Public Interest
1875 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20009-5728
Saturday, September 12, 2009
New Online News Source: Food Safety News
Bill Marler, food safety expert and food borne illness litigator just announced that his new online food safety newspaper will go live on Monday, September 14. For more information and to see what this exciting new publication will look like - visit Food Safety News to Go Live.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
HHS Secretary announces FoodSafety.gov
Health & Human Services Department Secretary Kathleen Sebelius spoke at the National Food Policy conference today and announced a new website created as a cooperative venture between HHS and the USDA - FoodSafety.gov. She also expressed the Department's commitment to prevention as a food safety focus, addressed the economic and human costs of the obesity epidemic, and discussed new efforts at regulation.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg Addresses Conference
Today at the National Food Policy Conference, new FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg announced the new Reportable Food Registry (RFR). Beginning today, the RFR requires a "responsible party" to file a report through the RFR electronic portal whenever there is a reasonable probability that an article of food will cause serious adverse health consequences to human or animals. This reporting must occur within 24 hours. The Wall Street Journal reported on this issue today online at FDA Requires Faster Food Safety Alerts. Information about the new FDA program can be found on the FDA website on Reportable Food Registry.I was pleased to get a chance to meet Commissioner Hamburg and to offer our support in the complex task of assuring food safety from the farm to the consumer.
Food Law & Policy is back!
The University of Arkansas School of Law is back in session. We have an exceptional group of LL.M. candidates in the Program this year. They come from American University Washington College of Law, Washington, D.C.; Lewis & Clark School of Law in Portland, Oregon; Pace University School of Law, White Plains, New York; Novgorod State University, St. Petersburg, Russia; Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Columbia; Nigerian Law School, Victoria Island, Lagos Nigeria; Indian Law Society’s Law College, University of Pune, Pune (Maharashtra), India; Gujarat National Law University, Gandhiinagar, Gujarat, India; and, our own University of Arkansas School of Law. Bios can be found on our website.
We are pleased to announce that we received the final administrative approval for our name, and we can now officially describe ourselves as
We are pleased to announce that we received the final administrative approval for our name, and we can now officially describe ourselves as
The LL.M. Program in
Agricultural and Food Law.
Agricultural and Food Law.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Arsenic in Chicken Feed
The title of this post almost sounds like a headline from The Onion. I wish it was.
Check out the Friday, June 26, 2009 Washington Post article about the continuing use of arsenic in chicken feed, A Deadly Ingredient in a Chicken Dinner by Douglas Gansler. Gansler serves as Attorney General of Maryland and is a member of the executive board of the National Association of Attorneys General. He also co-chairs the association's environmental committee.
As chicken integrators typically require the growers to use their special patented feed, information about what most chickens eat is a closely guarded trade secret.
As Att'y General Gansler points out, however,
The poultry industry has been using the feed additive roxarsone -- purportedly to fight parasites and increase growth in chickens -- since the Food and Drug Administration approved it in 1944. Turns out that the arsenic additive promotes the growth of blood vessels in chicken, which makes the meat appear pinker and more attractive in its plastic wrap at the grocery store, but does little else. The arsenic additive does the same in human cells, fueling a growth process known as angiogenesis, a critical first step in many human diseases such as cancer.The article reports that although the EU banned the use of roxarsone in chicken feed in 1999, "as recently as 2006, 70 percent of the more than 9 billion broiler chickens produced annually in the United States were fed roxarsone." Several chicken producers, including Tyson Foods and Perdue Farms claim that they no longer use it , and of course it is not used in raising organic chicken. When it is used, the arsenic can contaminate both water and soil through run off from the application of chicken manure to farm fields.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
