Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009
FOOD SAFETY ENHANCEMENT ACT OF 2009 -- (House of Representatives - July 29, 2009)
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Mr. DEAL of Georgia. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I, too, want to thank the sponsor of this legislation and our committee for working in a bipartisan fashion. As many of you will recall, earlier this year, our Nation was rocked with a peanut butter contamination that involved salmonella, and it became very apparent very shortly after the investigation started that a rogue operator, the Peanut Corporation of America, had risked the well-being of thousands of Americans.
In addition, it resulted in millions of dollars of loss to an industry that is very important to my State of Georgia. Peanut sales plummeted. It was in an effort to shore up the company's individual bottom line that PCA had recklessly jeopardized both peanut farmers and processors and the public in this country.
Now, this is a piece of legislation that is designed to try to correct some of those problems because they are not unique just to the peanut industry. We've seen them in the tomato, jalapeno pepper, the pistachio nuts, the contamination of spinach and many others. This legislation requires the development and implementation of a hazard analysis and food safety plan with regular updating, a requirement which is already in place for USDA-regulated facilities, such as poultry processing that is in my district. These plans have proved to be effective in reducing the hazard of food-borne contamination.
This legislation also implements a risk-based inspection schedule, which improves today's unacceptable status quo and targets our most vulnerable facilities for greater oversight. I know there's been concern about the overlap into USDA activities. There is language in the bill that would exclude the inclusion of farms within the bill. They are excluded. They are not required to register. They're not required to pay a registration fee. Livestock and poultry are also exempt. It does not allow the FDA to regulate what are now USDA-regulated facilities and products.
I commend this legislation and urge my colleagues to adopt it.
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