[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 116 (Monday, September 18, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9672-S9673]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FOOD SAFETY
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last Friday the Nation's largest grower of
organic produce announced a recall of fresh spinach products that they
feared could be linked to the deadly e-coli outbreak. So far, the Food
and Drug Administration has reported that a 77-year-old woman from
Wisconsin has died, 14 persons have suffered from kidney failure, and
at least 94 individuals have fallen ill after eating prepackaged
spinach suspected of being contaminated with e-coli. That is a total of
109 people in 19 different States.
This is not the first time produce has been contaminated with e-coli.
According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, between
1998 and 2004, there were 492 e-coli outbreaks that were linked to
fruits, vegetables, and fresh produce products such as prepackaged
salads. In fact, there were 86 outbreaks in the year 2004 alone.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, estimates
that as many as 76 million people suffer from food poisoning in our
country each year. Of those individuals, 325,000 will be hospitalized,
and more than 5,000 will die. Children and the elderly are especially
vulnerable.
Despite these statistics, our food supply is still the safest in the
world. However, there are widening gaps in our food safety system due
to the fact that food safety oversight has evolved over time and has
spread across so many different governmental agencies. Several Federal
agencies, all with different and sometimes conflicting missions, work
to ensure that the food we eat is safe. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service regulates meat,
poultry, and processed egg products. The Food and Drug Administration
Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and Center for Veterinary
Medicine regulate produce and other food products. Finally, the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention tracks food-borne illnesses.
One stark example of the inconsistencies in our food safety system is
the lack of standardization for food inspection. Processed food
facilities may be inspected by the FDA once every 5 or 6 years, while
meat and poultry operations are inspected every single day by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. This mismatch, piecemeal approach to food
safety could spell disaster if we don't act decisively and wisely. That
is why, since the 105th Congress, I have been pushing for a single food
safety program. It is not a new idea. In fact, one of my predecessors
is U.S. Senator Charles Percy, of Illinois, who raised this same issue
several decades ago--and he wasn't the first.
It doesn't take a person with an advanced degree in government to
look at so many different agencies of our Federal Government doing some
part of food safety and wonder why we don't put the whole
responsibility under one roof, guided by science and an operation that
is administered by true professionals. Instead, what we have done is
watched as our food safety system has evolved. From Upton Sinclair's
landmark novel ``The Jungle,'' which shamed America through the Teddy
Roosevelt administration into creating the first food safety standards
for our country, to the most recent outbreak, we are reminded time and
time again of our vulnerability.
We assume that the food we are eating and the food we are serving to
our families and our children and our elderly parents is safe, and by
and large it is the safest in the world. But we can do better, and this
e-coli outbreak involving spinach is a reminder.
This bill that I push would give that single food agency the
authority to protect the food supply based on science. This agency
would provide our country with the greatest hope of reducing food-borne
illness and preventing or minimizing the possible harm from any
bioterrorist attack involving our food supply.
Former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson told reporters, when he resigned
in December 2004, that he worries ``every single night'' about a
massive attack on the U.S. food supply. Here is what he said. Tommy
Thompson, a member of President Bush's Cabinet, said this:
I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists
have not, you know, attacked our food supply, because it is
so easy to do. And we are importing a lot of food from the
Middle East, and it would be easy to tamper with that.
We recognized the need for a unified Department of Homeland Security,
but we have not taken the same step with our food supply.
I might say, parenthetically, that it has been my experience in
Washington that when I raise this issue with people currently serving
in an administration, either as Secretary of Health and Human Services
or Secretary of Agriculture, they have real problems with the idea of
bringing all of these responsibilities under one roof and coordinating
this effort and stopping the duplication and mismanagement. It is not
until they leave Government, in their farewell speech, that they all
say: And you know, one thing we should have done is we should have
brought all that food safety under one roof.
This is a problem for those who face the special interests groups
that are afraid of change. But this change is a change America needs--
to have food safety based on science and an agency administered by real
professionals.
S. 729, the Safe Food Act of 2005, would create a single, independent
Federal food safety agency to administer all aspects of Federal food
safety, including inspections, enforcement, standards-setting, and
research in order to protect the public.
The components of the agencies now charged with protecting the food
supply, primarily housed at the Food and Drug Administration and the
Department of Agriculture, would be transferred to this new agency.
[[Page S9673]]
The new Food Safety Administrator would be responsible for the safety
of the food supply and would fulfill that charge by implementing the
registration and recordkeeping requirements of the 2002 bioterrorism
law.
We would also ensure that slaughterhouses and food processing plants
have procedures in place to prevent and reduce food contamination;
regularly inspect domestic food facilities, with inspection frequency
based on risk; centralize the authority to detain, seize, condemn, and
recall food that is adulterated or misbranded; examine the food safety
practices of foreign countries and work with States to impose various
civil and criminal penalties for the serious violations of food safety
laws; and, finally, require food producers to code their products so
those products can be traced easily in the event of a food-borne
illness outbreak in order to minimize the health impact of an event
like the spinach contamination we presently face.
In this most recent outbreak involving spinach, 22 days passed from
the time the first illness was reported to the Centers for Disease
Control to the time the Food and Drug Administration issued its
warning. In this area of food safety, time is of the essence. It was 3
weeks from the first serious outbreak and illness until there was a
warning issued by the FDA. That is too long. Too many people were
exposed to serious e-coli contamination, which can be deadly.
It is time to create a single food safety agency in this country. The
Government Accountability Office has been calling for it for more than
25 years. In February 2005, a GAO report showed that Government
officials in seven other high-income countries who have consolidated
their food safety systems consistently state that the benefits outweigh
the costs.
In a 1998 study, the National Academies of Sciences concluded that
``a model food safety system should have a unified mission and a single
official who is responsible for food safety at the Federal level and
who has the authority and the resources to implement science-based
policy in all Federal activities related to food safety.''
While I was speaking, a member of my staff handed me a note informing
me that we now know there has been an Illinois case which has been
reported of e-coli contamination, apparently from spinach. Now 20
States across our Nation have been affected. In this Illinois case, an
elderly woman has been hospitalized with kidney failure related to
tainted spinach, marking the first confirmed illness in my home State
of Illinois linking the outbreak of e-coli in the leafy green
vegetable. Illinois State public officials announced today that this
woman lives in north-central Illinois. She became ill late in August
and is now hospitalized with hemolytic uremic syndrome, a form of
kidney failure which can be associated with this strain of e-coli
linked to the tainted spinach, according to this report from the
Illinois Department of Public Health.
This is another example, and the numbers continue to grow. We are
going to do our best to contain them and to inform the public to keep
the food supply safe for everyone. But we can do better in Washington.
It is time to sit down with the special interest groups who have
stopped this change and to come up with a reasonable bipartisan
approach. There isn't anything partisan about this issue, not in any
way whatsoever.
One of my closest friends from Chicago went out and bought some
hamburger at a local grocery store years ago, took it home, and gave it
to her 5-year-old boy. That poor boy was exposed to e-coli and died a
few days later, a gruesome, horrible death. She became an advocate for
food safety. She took her grief and turned it into energy to try to
spare some family in the future from a similar tragedy. I hope it
doesn't take the families of those who have been hit by this e-coli to
form a group and push Congress into action. It is time that we took the
initiative.
Factors such as emerging pathogens, an aging population at high risk
for food-borne illnesses, an increasing volume of food imports, and
people eating outside their homes more than ever underscore the need
for change.
We need to change and shed the old bureaucratic shackles that have
tied us to the overlapping and inefficient ad hoc food safety system of
the past.
I urge my colleagues who are undoubtedly going to hear about this e-
coli contamination and wonder how they can respond to take a look at S.
729, the Safe Food Act of 2005. Please join me in cosponsoring this
landmark legislation.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennett). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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