Senator is Chairman of the Agriculture Appropriations panel with oversight of the nation’s two main agencies tasked with keeping the food supply safe

            WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Herb Kohl today sent a letter to President Barack Obama to collaborate on improving the nation’s food safety system.  Kohl is the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over funding for the nation’s two main agencies tasked with keeping the food supply safe:  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Food Safety and Inspection Service within the Department of Agriculture.  In 2007, Kohl convened hearings on food safety in both Washington and Wisconsin, and has since worked to boost funding for the FDA, increase the number of food safety inspectors domestically and abroad, and develop new, regional rapid response teams across the country to identify and isolate contaminated produce at its source.

            Kohl also announced that he would hold oversight hearings in the coming months to examine FDA’s efforts to keep the food supply safe, and that he would work with the incoming FDA Commissioner and the President’s interagency Food Safety Working Group to overhaul the food safety system.

            “I look forward to working with the Food Safety Working Group to ensure transparency and effectiveness for the funds already appropriated,” Kohl said in his letter to the President.  “If these additional taxpayer dollars do not result in better food safety they have, in effect, been wasted.  We cannot allow this to happen.”

            In FY2008, Kohl worked to provide an increase of $90 million over the Bush Administration’s request for the FDA, much of it directed to food safety.  For FY2009, one of Kohl’s priorities was to increase funding for the FDA of nearly $325 million over the previous year. 

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