Mandatory Recall Authority and Traceability Included in Omnibus Food Safety Bill
WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), Vice Chair of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, today praised the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 during a legislative hearing on the measure before the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee. U.S. Rep. DeGette is an original cosponsor of the legislation along with Chairman Henry Waxman, Chairman Emeritus John Dingell, Reps. Frank Pallone, Bart Stupak, and Betty Sutton. The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 incorporates U.S. Rep. DeGette’s two major food safety priorities, mandatory recall authority and traceability.
Click here for a summary of the legislation
Click here to watch U.S. Rep. DeGette deliver her opening statement.
Below are U.S. Rep. DeGette’s opening remarks as prepared for delivery:
“Mr. Chairman, this is the first step towards realizing a long held dream, not just by me and other members of this committee, but by the millions of Americans who have been concerned about the safety of our food – especially in light of the cascading litany of food borne illnesses that we have heard about from other members of this committee.
“We have had a dozen oversight hearings and also legislative hearings. We’ve had bills dropped by many Members of Congress for many years and I’m so excited under your leadership and the leadership of Chairman Waxman and Chairman Dingell, that we are finally on the verge of enacting comprehensive food safety legislation. The most important thing about this bill is it would be a definitive statement by this committee and this Congress that food safety is a priority in the United States of America.
“I want to highlight two of the sections of this bill and I want to thank you and Mr. Dingell and others and Mr. Stupak for including the provisions of my two bills in this draft mark because they’re critically important in the future to assuring safe food for everybody.
“The first one is traceability. As you know Mr. Chairman, I have been working on these traceability issues for many years, and when I first started people said it couldn’t be done. But then as we realized with time, not only can it be done, and in slightly different ways within every industry, but If we want to insure the integrity of the food system, it has to be done. What I fondly call the salsa scare of last year is the perfect example of why. We found people being sickened by salsa, and we couldn’t figure out why. This destroyed pretty much the entire profit of the tomato crop for that whole year because everybody thought it was tomatoes that had the salmonella. As it turned out, after months and months and months of increased sickness of increased scrutiny we found out that: no, it wasn’t the tomatoes at all, it was jalapeños, and they were from Texas. And what I found out is that we can go to the particular sector of the field and find those jalapeños and we can do it quickly. So traceability is going to be essential and I look forward to working with my friends on the other side of the aisle to make sure it is not onerous. But I will say this, it is not just in the interests of consumers, it is in the interest of businesses that want to protect their profits to have traceability.
“Mandatory Recall is a second provision of this bill that I’ve been working on for many years and I’m so grateful has been included. And I want to say finally Mr. Chairman, all of this policy that we talk about, it’s all well and good, but I can’t help but think about young Jacob Hurley who you might have seen, he was in our last Oversight and Investigations subcommittee hearing.
“Jacob is from Portland, Oregon, and he got sick from eating Peanut Butter Crackers, his favorite food. When his parents took him to the Doctor, they said they finally got him stabilized and he wouldn’t eat, so they told the parents: Have Jacob just eat what he loves, the Peanut Butter crackers. The very food that had made him sick in the first place, and the only way we found out about this was because the alert Commissioner of Consumer Protection in Oregon showed up personally at his door and confiscated the Peanut Butter crackers.
“We need to fix this, we need to fix it now and I’m so grateful that we are.
“Thank you Mr. Chairman.”
“Mr. Chairman, this is the first step towards realizing a long held dream, not just by me and other members of this committee, but by the millions of Americans who have been concerned about the safety of our food – especially in light of the cascading litany of food borne illnesses that we have heard about from other members of this committee.
“We have had a dozen oversight hearings and also legislative hearings. We’ve had bills dropped by many Members of Congress for many years and I’m so excited under your leadership and the leadership of Chairman Waxman and Chairman Dingell, that we are finally on the verge of enacting comprehensive food safety legislation. The most important thing about this bill is it would be a definitive statement by this committee and this Congress that food safety is a priority in the United States of America.
“I want to highlight two of the sections of this bill and I want to thank you and Mr. Dingell and others and Mr. Stupak for including the provisions of my two bills in this draft mark because they’re critically important in the future to assuring safe food for everybody.
“The first one is traceability. As you know Mr. Chairman, I have been working on these traceability issues for many years, and when I first started people said it couldn’t be done. But then as we realized with time, not only can it be done, and in slightly different ways within every industry, but If we want to insure the integrity of the food system, it has to be done. What I fondly call the salsa scare of last year is the perfect example of why. We found people being sickened by salsa, and we couldn’t figure out why. This destroyed pretty much the entire profit of the tomato crop for that whole year because everybody thought it was tomatoes that had the salmonella. As it turned out, after months and months and months of increased sickness of increased scrutiny we found out that: no, it wasn’t the tomatoes at all, it was jalapeños, and they were from Texas. And what I found out is that we can go to the particular sector of the field and find those jalapeños and we can do it quickly. So traceability is going to be essential and I look forward to working with my friends on the other side of the aisle to make sure it is not onerous. But I will say this, it is not just in the interests of consumers, it is in the interest of businesses that want to protect their profits to have traceability.
“Mandatory Recall is a second provision of this bill that I’ve been working on for many years and I’m so grateful has been included. And I want to say finally Mr. Chairman, all of this policy that we talk about, it’s all well and good, but I can’t help but think about young Jacob Hurley who you might have seen, he was in our last Oversight and Investigations subcommittee hearing.
“Jacob is from Portland, Oregon, and he got sick from eating Peanut Butter Crackers, his favorite food. When his parents took him to the Doctor, they said they finally got him stabilized and he wouldn’t eat, so they told the parents: Have Jacob just eat what he loves, the Peanut Butter crackers. The very food that had made him sick in the first place, and the only way we found out about this was because the alert Commissioner of Consumer Protection in Oregon showed up personally at his door and confiscated the Peanut Butter crackers.
“We need to fix this, we need to fix it now and I’m so grateful that we are.
“Thank you Mr. Chairman.”
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