[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 151 (Thursday, November 18, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8008-S8009]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              FOOD SAFETY

  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, it is a pleasure to rise to speak about 
the historic Food Safety Modernization Act.
  I thank Chairman Harkin, who worked with me to include provisions to 
help small farms and processors and organic farms so that they have 
before them in this bill provisions that support them and will help 
make them successful. The last thing we want to see is an effort to 
make our food safety system work better be used as a tool to diminish 
the ability of small farms and organic farms to thrive. That has been 
effectively addressed in the bill but also by provisions I will speak 
to in a while that Senator Tester is bringing forward.
  I also compliment Senator Durbin, who has been advocating for this 
bill, working on the elements of the bill for a very long time, and his 
determined, tenacious advocacy is the reason this bill is on the floor 
before us at this moment.
  I also appreciate the bipartisan problem-solving approach of the 
ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, 
Senator Enzi, and all of the members of the committee for coming 
together to say: This is not a Republican or a Democratic problem, this 
is a national health care issue, a national nutrition issue, and let's 
tackle it together.
  The safety of the Nation's food supply is a serious concern for every 
family in Oregon and across this Nation. I wish to highlight one Oregon 
family in particular, Jake Hurley and his dad Peter. I am sure they are 
very happy to see that we have this bill on the floor, and they will be 
particularly thrilled when we have it on the President's desk because 
the issue of tracing contaminated food is an issue that has affected 
their family very directly.

[[Page S8009]]

  This picture is one of Jake taken when his father Peter came with him 
to Washington, DC, to testify before this Congress and share their 
story. Jake's favorite food was peanut butter crackers. When he was 3 
years old, he became very, very ill. Those crackers he loved so much 
were the source of his illness, but because we didn't have an effective 
tracking system, there was no recall and there was no understanding 
that the crackers were contaminated. So in his illness, his family 
continued to share with him his favorite comfort food--those same 
peanut butter crackers that were making him extremely ill. It turns out 
they were contaminated with salmonella, and the result was that a 
child's snack ended up putting Jake's life in danger.
  The Food and Drug Administration had already determined that peanut 
butter was a cause of sickening people across the country, but they 
hadn't been able to trace the peanut butter and know it had made its 
way into processed products--in particular, the product Jake was 
consuming. The Peanut Corporation of America, a peanut processing 
facility in Georgia, had contaminated peanut butter that went into 
thousands of products, sickening 714 people in 46 States, including 
Oregon, and killing 9. The Hurleys and countless other families have 
been waiting for Congress to pass this bill so that other families 
don't have to be worried that their children will become terribly sick 
because we can't track contaminated food.
  This bill requires the FDA to create rules for tracing processed 
foods, such as the peanut butter crackers that made Jake sick last 
year. It took the FDA over a year to trace all the products that the 
peanut butter went into during that outbreak in 2009. It is still not 
clear that they ever found all of the products. This is unacceptable. 
Provisions in this bill will help prevent not only future outbreaks but 
also future problems tracking down the contaminated food products.
  In my work in the HELP Committee, I secured a provision to ensure 
that in addition to tracing produce, which was already in the bill, we 
set up a pilot project to calculate the best practices for tracing 
processed food, which is a more difficult undertaking. But after the 
bill came out of committee, Senator Sherrod Brown worked hard to build 
on that, and he has strengthened the tracing provisions further in the 
bill. I certainly thank him for doing that. The bill now requires the 
FDA to create regulations ensuring quick and accurate tracing of all 
types of contaminated food.
  Better tracing of contaminated food and better coordination between 
local, State, and Federal food safety officials can help prevent 
children like Jet Valenzuela from getting food poisoning. I turn now to 
a picture of Jet. I met Jet earlier this summer in Oregon. This is a 
picture of him in the hospital 2 years ago, when he became violently 
ill from contaminated food. He had a deadly form of E. coli. He was 
hospitalized in Bend, OR. He became so ill that he was flown to 
Portland for more intensive care. Jet underwent multiple surgeries, 
blood transfusions, and was eventually put into a medically induced 
coma. He came within a hair's breath of dying twice. The scariest part 
of Jet's story is that we were never able to find what made him sick, 
despite their best efforts, because we didn't have the type of produce 
and processed food procedures that could assist in tracking down the 
source.
  So for Jet and Jake, it is urgent to pass this bill. Not only does 
this help respond, but it helps prevent food outbreaks. No family 
should have to go through what these families went through. Most 
parents, including myself, have spent a lot of time worrying about how 
to keep their kids safe, but we should not have to worry about how to 
protect our children from the food on our plates.
  Implementing food safety provisions has to be done in a way that 
supports our small farms, our family farms. We cannot have a process 
that hinders them in operating successfully or puts unnecessary 
restrictions in their path.
  I thank Chairman Harkin for including language in the bill that I 
suggested, so that no new regulations would conflict with or duplicate 
the requirements of the National Organic Program. This ensures that 
there will not be any food safety regulations that would put their 
organic certification in jeopardy.
  I wish to draw attention to the work Senator Tester has done. He 
authored provisions that provide reasonable exemptions for very small 
farms and processors--farms that sell their products directly to local 
consumers, farms that sell their products directly to local restaurants 
or to local grocery stores. This comprises only about 1 percent of our 
national food production, but it is a very important part of our local 
economies, a very important foundation for our family farms. So I am 
proud to support the work Senator Tester has done in making sure our 
small local farms are fully accounted for and supported in this 
legislation.
  Also in this bill are exemptions for farms that produce low-risk 
food, no matter what their size. This is a type of logical flexibility 
to make regulations apply when they are needed and not provide 
unnecessary restrictions or hurdles when they are not.
  In conclusion, I urge all of my colleagues to support this bill. It 
will improve the tracing of contaminated food, whether that be produce 
or processed. It will increase inspections. It will create safety 
guidelines for farms and processors. It will protect organic farms, 
protect small farms.
  This bill works to prevent contamination as well so that we can avoid 
unnecessary illness and death. Improvements to tracing contaminated 
food will not only prevent illness but will prevent costly recalls for 
farms and food processors who are not at fault for a particular 
contamination.
  Most important, this bill will help other families avoid what Jake 
and Jet and their parents went through. Parents should be able to pack 
their children's lunch boxes without fear.
  Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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