Food Safety Bill Passes House 283-142 (how do you vote against food safety?)

[DainBramaged]

the House passed the Food Safety Enhancement Act by a vote of 283-142 to fundamentally change the way we protect the safety of our food supply. Each year, 76 million Americans are sickened from consuming contaminated food and 5,000 of these people die. In just the last few years, there has been a string of food-borne illness outbreaks in foods consumed by millions of Americans each day – from spinach to peppers to peanuts, pistachios and cookie dough. This recent series of outbreaks of food-borne illnesses has demonstrated that they are not random, unpreventable occurrences, but are due to widespread problems with our current food safety system.

The Food Safety Enhancement Act gives new enforcement tools and funding to the FDA to better ensure food safety including more frequent inspection of food processing facilities, the development of a food trace-back system to pinpoint the source of food-borne illnesses, and enhanced powers to ensure that imported foods are safe.

http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=1894


Freaking Repukes, the party of NO, death and hate.

http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/legislation?id=0332

Each year, 76 million Americans are sickened from consuming contaminated food and 5,000 of these people die. In just the last few years, there has been a string of food-borne illness outbreaks in foods consumed by millions of Americans each day – from spinach to peppers to peanuts, pistachios and cookie dough. This recent series of outbreaks of food-borne illnesses has demonstrated that they are not random, unpreventable occurrences, but are due to widespread problems with our current food safety system.

Today, the House passed the Food Safety Enhancement Act (H.R. 2749) to fundamentally change the way we protect the safety of our food supply. The new authorities provided to the FDA to better ensure food safety include more frequent inspection of food processing facilities, the development of a food trace-back system to pinpoint the source of food-borne illnesses, and enhanced powers to ensure that imported foods are safe.

New Authorities 0f FDA to Better Ensure Food Safety
The bill includes several long-overdue repairs to our food safety system, in order to protect our children and families from contaminated food.

[The Straight Story]

1. Easy to vote against

Some folks attach a bunch of off the wall shit to bills/etc which they know others will vote against (imagine a food safety bill where something was attached to limit abortions, would you vote for it?).

[DainBramaged]

2. Yeah, but it makes these CONjobs look anti-American, how dare they vote against the chillrens?

:patriot:

[BlooInBloo]

18. Not if they get to frame the issue unopposed.

[Ian David]

3. People should take personal responsibility and have food safety labs in their homes! n/t

[global1]

4. An Interesting Concept - What Equipment Would You Have In The Homes For A .....

food safety lab? How would one go about setting up a food safety lab in their home? I'd like to attempt that.

[Ian David]

5. First, ask the government to give you a million dollars to build it. n/t

[global1]

7. Really - Is There Something I Can Do Inexpensively In My Home To......

test food? Sounds to me like a potential product/business idea. I'm serious.

[Ian David]

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These bacteria are harmful (and potentially deadly) to humans especially the elderly and children. All food including organic food carry bacteria.

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More:
http://www.whynotad.com/advertising/Home-Food-Test-Kits-For-EColi-And-Salmonella-1

[abumbyanyothername]

19. Maybe just know the first name of the person

who grew all your food.

[Vinca]

6. Cain't have guvment reglations on evrathin'.

Morans wanna be free.:rofl:

[mdavies013]

8. You all are communists...socialists...that don't believe in free markets

Why would we applaud this? Everyone knows that CEO's can better police their business and that government can't do anything?

DO YOU REALLY WANT A GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRAT TO COME BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR DINNER TABLE????

(sarcasm - in case you did not realize)

[Ian David]

15. If a hamburger kills your child, then you buy your hamburgers someplace else. Market forces! n/t

[fasttense]

9. What kind of regulations are they putting on the small farmer

who sells his homegrown produce at roadside stands and Farmer's markets? If it requires registering for $500 a year, that will pretty much wipe out the small farmer.

[customerserviceguy]

12. Exactly

I like to pick up fresh produce when I travel in the boondocks, I really don't worry much about the quality of what I get when I'm in Amish Country in Pennsylvania.

[spanone]

10. easy, the food industry buys your vote

[customerserviceguy]

11. I can think of one possible reason for the votes against this

It's right from your link to Nancy Pelosi's page:

"The bill also requires all domestic and foreign food facilities selling to American consumers to pay an annual registration fee of $500 per facility."

This is really going to impact very small businesses. You know that cute little farmers' market that you might have in town? Five Franklins a year is going to really cut into their ability to show up every Saturday in the good weather months to sell you locally produced food.

Ever go into a grocery store, and next to the brands of barbecue sauce made by Kraft in vats the size of your house, there are locally made specialty sauces that use real flavorings, and not just salt to make a great taste experience? I routinely pick up such things at the supermarkets when I travel, I guess now I'm going to have to pay three times as much for them from some boutique shop if I want to take the taste of my vacation home with me.

The problem with our food is not some small facility with the family's name (and reputation) on the label, it's the faceless agribusiness conglomerates that just don't give a shit about the shit they allow to get into our food. An exemption from this annual fee by dollar amount of food sold, or perhaps better yet a sliding scale that increases to $500 as a family food business gets larger would probably eliminate some objections.

[DainBramaged]

17. Agribusiness is far from small, and the percentage of 'small' farmers

in the grand scheme of things is minuscule. I don't understand how ANYONE can find a problem with improving food safety especially when it comes to financing more inspectors.

But this is DU, people find fault with Sanity Clause.

[customerserviceguy]

20. I didn't describe agribusiness as small, I only meant to imply

that some parts of what makes up "agribusiness" as a whole are relatively small cogs in the whole machine. Generally, it's those really smallest of cogs that are the absolute least of the problem.

If you've got a small farm that supplies things to larger businesses, that in turn mix your product with the product of many small farms, thus spreading contamination from one isolated place to the collective output of many, doesn't it make sense to impose the taxes, fees, and inspections on the facilities where the combining is done? Clearly, that gives them an incentive to make sure that the small farms they're dealing with are practicing good food safety standards.

Inspectors are not the only answer. We already have inspection services for a multitude of industries where inspectors are either lazy, ineffective, easily fooled, or outright bribed. Frankly, if you keep the numbers of them manageable, you can keep their supervision manageable, as well.

I'll admit, the vast majority of the food I eat is from the local supermarkets and the local produce market. But it isn't that way for a large number of us here on DU, and neither of us wants to lose the option to deal with small producers of products who actually give a damn about what it is they're selling. It's legitimate to be wary of a plan that charges the same flat fee to the person with the fresh vegetables at a roadside stand and to the giant processing plant where millions get their food from.

[PA Democrat]

13. Would I be evil for wishing a case of salmonella poisoning on the "no" voters?

Nothing fatal, but nasty enough to put them out of commission for a week or so.

[defendandprotect]

16. Good news . . . genetic food, ammonia in ground chuck, downed animals . . .

low inspections -- yipes!!!

I hear they were putting ammonia into ground chuck to kill e-coli?