Hearing of the House Subcommittee on Health of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce - H.R. 3610, The Food and Drug Import Saftey Act

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Hearing of the House Subcommittee on Health of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce - H.R. 3610, The Food and Drug Import Saftey Act

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REP. DIANA DEGETTE (D-CO): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding the hearing today.

I got involved in food safety legislation some years ago when a meat processing plant in my home state of Colorado sent out contaminated meat all around the West. And what I learned is, probably the most important thing we can do as members of Congress is work hard to protect the health and safety of our constituents.

When our constituents go to the grocery store and buy a package of hamburger, or when they buy spinach to give to their children because they think it's a healthy choice, they rely on our government and our food safety agencies -- all 13 of them -- to make sure that their food is wholesome and safe for them to eat.

That system has pretty much fallen apart from top to bottom, I think in large part because of imports from overseas in the last few years. And people are shocked by the continuing number of food safety issues we have.

That's why I want to thank Chairman Dingell for developing comprehensive draft legislation that will deal with the issue of both resources and accountability.

Seems to me there's a number of issues that we need to discuss in the food safety issue. The first and key issue is resources. Our food safety agencies do not have the resources to do the job that we have been asking them to do and which increasingly they need to do.

Secondly, the administration needs to think about how they are going to ensure food safety. And frankly, closing down FDA labs like the lab in my own backyard at the federal center in Denver is really not the way to go.

I have a whole different set of concerns about the FDA labs than Mr. Green has and one of them is that we're going to lose scientists who have years and years of experience. The response from industry has been somewhat more responsive and I'm happy to hear later today from the Grocery Manufacturers Association about their proposals.

There's a couple of issues I've been working on ever since I got involved in these issues some years ago.

The first one is giving mandatory recall authority to the FDA. People are shocked when they find out that the Consumer Product Safety Commission can recall toys, although it's cumbersome, but that we can't recall tainted baby food that we feed to those same babies. We need to have mandatory recall authority for a variety of reasons.

Secondly -- and there's a bill, H.R. 3484, that I have introduced that grants mandatory recall authority to the FDA and to the USDA.

The second issue that I would really -- I'm glad the chairman has arrived because I would really urge him to look at this in the legislation -- that's legislation I've been working on, H.R. 3485, the Trace Act, which would set up a product tracing system that would track food from the farm to the grocery store which would enable faster recall in the event of contamination.

That also would help us go a long way in keeping our food supply that we give to consumers safe.

Mr. Chairman, the bill before us is a great start. I'm happy that we're having a hearing on it and I look forward to working with you and the chairman of the full committee to making sure that we pass comprehensive food safety legislation in this session of Congress.

Thank you.

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