[NAFEX] Fwd: Senate Food Safety Alert - Please Forward

Road's End Farm organic87 at frontiernet.net
Fri Aug 13 19:41:26 EDT 2010


Sorry for cross posting, I'm on two or three lists that should see  
this --

Haven't had time to study it yet myself, we have a market tomorrow  
morning.


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Annette Higby, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition"
> Date: August 13, 2010 6:06:19 PM EDT
> Subject: Senate Food Safety Alert - Please Forward
> Reply-To: annette   at      sustainableagriculture    dot   net



> Senate Food Safety Legislation
> Information Alert
> August 13, 2010
>
> The Food Safety Modernization Act (S 510) was reported out of the  
> Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee in November of  
> last year. The bill as reported out of committee would ramp up FDA  
> regulation on farms that even minimally process their crops and sell  
> them to restaurants, food coops, groceries, schools and wholesalers.
>
> Yesterday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP)  
> Committee released a copy of the "manager's amendment" to the FDA  
> Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510). These amendments have the  
> support of HELP Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Ranking Member Mike  
> Enzi (R-WY) as well as the four lead sponsors of the underlying  
> bill, Dick Durbin (D-IL), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Chris Dodd (D-CT), and  
> Richard Burr (R-NC) and will be adopted if and when the bill comes  
> to the Senate floor in September when Congress returns from its  
> summer recess. The full manager's package is available here.
>
> In releasing the new version of the bill, Senator Harkin said, "For  
> far too long, the headlines have told the story of why this measure  
> is so urgently needed: foodborne illness outbreaks, product recalls  
> and Americans sickened over the food they eat. This 100-year-old  
> plus food safety structure needed to be modernized."
>
> Most sustainable agriculture and family farm groups think the Senate  
> bill with the manager's amendment is a very significant improvement  
> over the companion bill passed by the House of Representatives (HR  
> 2749) last year. NSAC has been able to help make substantial  
> improvements in the Senate bill through the HELP markup and in  
> changes that will be adopted as part of the manager's amendment when  
> the bill comes to the Senate floor. If the Tester amendment (see  
> below) can be worked out and agreed to before Senate floor action,  
> we will be able to support the Senate bill. However, we strongly  
> oppose the companion House measure, and stand ready to defend the  
> Senate bill in conference with the House should that prove necessary.
>
> The Managers package includes the following important improvements  
> to the bill as reported out of committee last year:
>
> * The amendment sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)  
> pertaining to farms that engage in value-added processing or that co- 
> mingle product from several farms. It will provide the Food and Drug  
> Administration (FDA) with the authority to either exempt farms  
> engaged in low or no risk processing or co-mingling activities from  
> new regulatory requirements or to modify particular regulatory  
> requirements for such farming operations. Included within the  
> purview of the amendment are exemptions or flexibilities with  
> respect to requirements within S. 510 for expensive food safety  
> preventative control plans and FDA on-farm inspections.
>
> * The amendments sponsored by Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) to  
> reduce unnecessary paperwork and excess regulation. The Bennet  
> language pertains to both the preventative control plan and the  
> produce standards sections of the bill. FDA is instructed to provide  
> flexibility for small processors including on-farm processing, to  
> minimize the burden of compliance with regulations, and to minimize  
> the number of different standards that apply to separate foods. FDA  
> will also be prohibited from requiring farms and other food  
> facilities to hire consultants to write food safety plans or to  
> identify, implement, certify or audit those plans. With respect to  
> produce standards, FDA will also be given the discretion to develop  
> rules for categories of foods or for mixtures of foods rather than  
> necessarily needing to have a separate rule for each specific  
> commodity or to regulate specific crops if the real food safety  
> issue involved mixtures only.
>
> * The amendment sponsored by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) to  
> provide for a USDA-delivered competitive grants program for food  
> safety training for farmers, small processors and wholesalers. The  
> training projects will prioritize small and mid-scale farms,  
> beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers, and small food  
> processors and wholesalers. The program will be administered by  
> USDA's National Institute for Food and Agriculture. As is the case  
> for all of the provisions in S. 510, funding for the bill and for  
> this competitive grants program will happen through the annual  
> agriculture appropriations bill process.
>
> * The effort championed by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to strip the  
> bill of wildlife-threatening enforcement against "animal  
> encroachment" of farms is also in the manager's package. It will  
> require FDA to apply sound science to any requirements that might  
> impact wildlife and wildlife habitat on farms.
>
> * An amendment proposed by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to amend the  
> traceability and recordkeeping section of the bill that will exempt  
> food that is direct marketed from farmers to consumers or to grocery  
> stores and exempt food that has labeling that preserves the identity  
> of the farm that produced the food. The amendment also prevents FDA  
> from requiring any farm from needing to keep records beyond the  
> first point of sale when the product leaves the farm, except in the  
> case of farms that co-mingle product from multiple farms, in which  
> case they must also keep records one step back as well as one step  
> forward.
>
> Not in the package but still under serious negotiation for inclusion  
> in the bill when it reaches the floor of the Senate is an amendment  
> by Senator John Tester (D-MT) to exempt food facilities with under a  
> certain annual gross sales threshold from preventative control plan  
> requirements and to exempt farmers who primarily direct market  
> product to consumers, stores or restaurants from the bill's produce  
> standards regulations. Our expectation is this amendment will be  
> successfully negotiated over the coming weeks and will be accepted  
> as part of the final bill once the bill reaches the Senate floor.
>
>
> We also continue to note and emphasize the additional provisions  
> NSAC helped secure when the bill was marked up in Committee last  
> year. Those changes included:
>
> * requiring FDA and USDA coordination (including with respect to  
> organic farming);
>
> * limiting recordkeeping for farmers to just the initial sale to the  
> first purchaser of the crop; and
>
> * language in the produce section directing FDA to create rules that  
> are appropriate to the scale and diversity of the farm, that take  
> into consideration conservation and environmental standards  
> established by other federal agencies, that do not conflict with  
> organic certification standards, and that prioritize high risk crops.
>
> Still pending is an amendment from Senator Feinstein (D-CA) banning  
> the use of Bisphenol A (BPA) in all food and beverage containers.  
> The Grocery Manufacturers Association and other industry groups have  
> come out strongly against the measure. Negotiations are ongoing to  
> work out compromise language, but it is unclear to us what the  
> status is of those talks.
>
>

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