Food
Safety Oversight Hearing at House Appropriations Agriculture
Subcommittee
Last
week, the House Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Agriculture held a
hearing on Food Safety Oversight. Daniel Levinson, Inspector General for the
Department of Health and Human Services, testified that "recent outbreaks of
foodborne illness involving peanut butter, peppers, and spinach have raised
serious questions about the Food & Drug Administration's ability to protect
the Nation's Food Supply." He emphasized traceability of all products at all
stages of the food supply chain as an imperative goal.
This happened in the wake of
several food safety bills introduced in Congress -- and led to a great
deal of chatter on blogs and listserves reacting to potential impacts on small
producers. There is concern that additional costs to track food from source to
plate could be too great a burden on small producers. NCRLC will continue to
follow this issue as a member of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition,
which has formed an emergency task force to analyze food safety bills. The
intent is to get beyond the hype and develop policy from the vantage point of
small farms and organic operations.
For now, our readers may be
interested in the March 20 edition of "The Hill" (a Capitol Hill news source
read by staffers and legislators) which contains a five-page special section on
Agriculture and Food
Safety.