[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16311-16323]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   UNANIMOUS-CONSENT REQUEST--S. 510

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon, in the 
presence of Senator Coburn of Oklahoma and Senator Harkin of Iowa, to 
discuss an issue I have worked on literally for my entire congressional 
career--food safety. This is an issue which has haunted me since my 
days in the House of Representatives when I received a letter from a 
woman in Chicago, far outside of my central Illinois congressional 
district, who told me the story of her 6-year-old son Alex. She brought 
home a pound of hamburger from the local grocery store and fed it to 
her son, and he was dead 3 days later from food contamination that led 
to a very painful, horrible death which has haunted her to this day. 
Her name is Nancy Donnelly. She has focused her life on making food 
safety laws better in America. I have joined her in that effort. I was 
inspired by her tragedy and by the many people who came to me and 
explained how they had been through similar circumstances.
  For almost 20 years now, I have been taking on this issue. I have 
tried from the very beginning to bring to the attention of Members of 
Congress the fact that there are at least 12 different food safety 
agencies in our Federal Government. When we look to the origin of 
these, the U.S. Department of Agriculture got started because Upton 
Sinclair wrote ``The Jungle,'' which told about the horrible 
circumstances in the packinghouses of Chicago. That

[[Page 16312]]

novel led Congress to pass the first food safety law with the U.S. 
Department of Agriculture as the lead. Over the years, the Food and 
Drug Administration expanded its role in this area, and many other 
agencies did as well.
  I have always argued that we need better coordination. In fact, we 
need one single food safety agency that uses science and tries to reach 
new efficiencies by avoiding overlap in deciding what is the safest 
approach to food in America. I haven't had much luck. Rarely do I find 
a bipartisan cosponsor, find anybody who will join me in this effort. 
But I understand the Senator from Oklahoma said yesterday he is 
interested in it, and I welcome him to be part of this conversation. I 
want to see the day when we have a single food safety agency that gets 
the job done in a professional way.
  What do we do before then? Knowing that this will take some time, and 
it has taken time already, what do we do? I think we should clearly 
look at the weaknesses in the current food safety system and address 
them directly.
  If I said to the Presiding Officer, before he was in the Senate and 
before he became conversant with most of the laws of the land, if I 
asked, do you believe there is a Federal law which allows the Federal 
Government a mandatory recall of contaminated, deadly food products on 
the shelves of America, he would say, of course, that is why we have 
food safety agencies. The answer is no, there is no such law. The 
government has no power to recall deadly and contaminated food products 
on shelves across America--amazing, but it is a fact. This bill we are 
trying to call before the Senate will give the government the power to 
recall deadly food. That is a major step forward. If we did nothing 
else in this bill, it is a major step forward.
  The bill also gives the Food and Drug Administration the authority to 
expand their inspections, not just here in the United States, where 
there is plenty to be done--we are seeing an FDA inspector once a year 
as a novelty--but overseas, where there is literally no inspection. As 
foods come in from all over the world, we don't know the standards they 
are using. Unfortunately, our people are vulnerable as a result.
  Should we have mandatory recall? Should we have more inspections? 
Absolutely. I think that is a must to make sure we don't run into the 
tragedies we have seen repeated over and over again. Hardly a week goes 
by that there isn't some new food tragedy--peanut butter, spinach, 
tomatoes, eggs. People get sick--and some die--week after week, month 
after month. So the question is, Will we do something about it?
  I went to Senator Harkin, chairman of the committee, and asked him to 
lead, with Senator Enzi, his Republican counterpart, in a reform bill 
that will make this system better, really fill in some of the gaps, 
move us forward. He took that challenge and handled it very 
professionally and very quickly. In fact, we have 19 Senators, 
Democrats and Republicans, in a bipartisan effort, after hearings in 
his committee, after markup in his committee, bringing this bill to the 
floor.
  For the first time since I have been engaged in this debate, we have 
the support not only of consumer groups, which we would expect, we have 
the support of the industry--the food processors, the grocery 
manufacturers. Why? Because they understand that once we lose 
confidence in our food supply, it hurts them as businesspeople.
  So here we are, a moment, an opportunity we have worked for for 
years--literally years--a bill we have been working on for months in a 
bipartisan fashion, and all we are asking for is a chance to bring it 
to the floor. That is all. Bring it to the floor, entertain amendments, 
debate it, deliberate, and vote. People who come and visit Washington 
think that is what the Senate does, right? An important issue, a life-
and-death issue for families, something we all care about when we put 
food on the table--thank goodness the Senate is finally going to take 
up something that affects their lives, and it is going to do it in a 
professional, bipartisan way. Thank goodness all the games are over.
  No. Welcome to the U.S. Senate. When we bring the matter to the floor 
and ask for a chance to debate and deliberate it, 1 Senator, who is on 
the floor today, says no--not 99 Senators, 1 Senator says no.
  We said to the Senator: If you object to the bill, you can vote 
against it.
  He said: Not good enough.
  We said to the Senator: If you want to offer an amendment to this 
bill, offer an amendment.
  Not good enough. He says: No, I don't want the Senate to take up this 
bill and debate it. I don't want them to vote on this bill. I want this 
bill to die right now. I don't want it to go forward.
  From my point of view, we are all entitled to our opinion. We are all 
entitled to our political position. In the Senate, one is entitled to 
speak their mind. In the Senate, one is entitled to debate and 
deliberate, to offer an amendment and have a vote. But at the end of 
the day, if there is any fairness in this body, the majority will 
decide what goes forward.
  In this case, one Senator has said no. Nineteen Senators, Democrats 
and Republicans together, are not enough, putting this together after 
the years of work that have gone into it. It is not enough. That 
troubles me because I think this issue is a life-or-death issue. This 
morning's Washington Post talked about what has happened to 
unsuspecting people across America who ate the contaminated eggs. Think 
about it. Eggs are supposed to be wholesome and nutritious and good for 
you, but thousands of these eggs contaminated with salmonella, sold 
across America, have made people sick, and for some their lives will be 
compromised forever.
  I would think that when we consider the medical problems which will 
be created if we stop this debate, when we think of the victims across 
America of food contamination, for goodness' sake, shouldn't we err on 
the side of moving forward? Who argues against a mandatory recall of 
contaminated food from shelves across America? Who argues against 
giving the Food and Drug Administration the power to move forward to 
make sure there are more inspections done on a scientific basis? That, 
to me, is basic.
  When a customer goes into a store across America, they assume 
something: They assume the government is involved in this decision, 
that somebody, somewhere took a look at what they are about to buy and 
said it is safe to sell it in America. I have to tell you, in most 
instances, they are mistaken. The inspections are not frequent enough. 
The inspections, sadly, do not take place in many instances.
  Well, the argument on the other side is, come on, Senator, everybody 
can dream up a new way to spend money. You have dreamed up a new way to 
spend money. You want to have more inspections. You want to send 
inspectors out to make sure our food is safe. Well, great. I can think 
up a way to spend money too. The argument is, if you are going to spend 
money and add to our deficit, the answer is no, no matter what you say, 
or you have to come up with some way to pay for it now.
  What I have to remind the Senator from Oklahoma--and he and I have 
had this debate over and over--this is an authorization bill. It does 
not spend money. In order to spend the money, you have to go through an 
appropriations bill that actually spends it. In other words, you are 
given a finite amount of money and you decide: What is a priority? I 
think this is a priority. Something else may not be funded. This should 
be funded. It is an authorization bill.
  What about the cost of this bill? How do we put the cost of this bill 
in comparison to some other issues? Modernizing the food safety system 
of America costs us $280 million a year. That is less than $1 for every 
American. Providing tax cuts for the wealthiest people in America: $400 
billion a year. That is Senator McConnell's plan to extend the Bush tax 
cuts for the wealthy. So $400 billion unpaid for, adding to the 
deficit, versus $280 million to protect families from contaminated 
food.

[[Page 16313]]

  Let's take a look at what happens when you do not spend the money and 
have the inspection. In 2006, an E. coli outbreak cost spinach growers 
across America $350 million in 1 year. That means that industry lost 
$70 million more than the entire cost of food safety inspection in the 
bill for 1 year. Would those growers rather have seen people not be 
victimized by a contaminated product and not seen their own operations 
destroyed for an inspection? I think they would have. They are not the 
only ones. In 2008, the salmonella outbreak linked first to tomatoes 
and then to peppers cost the Florida tomato industry over $500 million. 
In a single year, tomato and pepper growers lost nearly twice as much 
as this food safety bill costs. Doing nothing is not only cruel to the 
unsuspecting customers and consumers across America, it is devastating 
to the food industry. That is why they support this bill. They 
understand they would rather be subject to inspection so the consumers 
have more confidence in their product and they do not run the risk of 
having their livelihood devastated by a food contamination outbreak.
  The cost of doing nothing can also be measured in lost quality of 
life. Each year, 76 million Americans suffer from a preventable 
foodborne illness. For some of them, it is an upset stomach or 
diarrhea, but for others it is more; 325,000 people are hospitalized, 
accumulating large medical bills, each year, and 5,000 people pay for 
food contamination with their lives. That is the reality of what they 
face.
  I know I take this bill personally because of the fact that I have 
come to know some of the people who are involved in food contamination. 
I want to show you the photos of just two people before I propound a 
unanimous consent request and turn this over to my colleague from Iowa.
  Marry Ann, shown in this photograph I have in the Chamber--this 
lovely lady--is an 80-year-old grandmother who contracted E. coli from 
spinach just before she left to meet with her family at the park for a 
Labor Day gathering. She is from Mendota, IL, a small town near my 
hometown. She is alive today, thank God, but the kidney failure, 
violent vomiting, and uncontrollable diarrhea are constant reminders 
that her quality of life will never be the same. She is 80 years old, 
and she struggles now to get by every day because of food 
contamination. She is standing with us in this fight to improve our 
food safety system so that no one else has to endure what she has been 
through.
  Now I would like to introduce you to a young man. I hope I do not 
mispronounce the name of his hometown. Senator Coburn will know it 
better than I. His name is Richard, and he is from Owasso, OK. At age 
15, Richard joined the unfortunate ranks of foodborne illness victims. 
After he returned home from a camping trip, Richard began experiencing 
headaches, diarrhea, and his urine turned black. He was later diagnosed 
with E. coli contamination For 8 years, Richard has endured pain and 
suffering because of it--migraine headaches, dry heaving, high blood 
pressure, and, after a series of dialysis treatments, kidney failure--
kidney failure. Last year, Richard was having a kidney transplant while 
the House was debating and passing the food safety bill.
  Richard and his mother Christine are following this food safety 
debate because of their own family experience. They are following it 
from Richard's hospital room. Days ago, Richard was moved to the 
intensive care unit due to swelling in his brain and his inability to 
speak.
  On the day the Senator from Oklahoma was informing the press of his 
objections to the food safety bill, Christine, Richard's mom, was 
making an airline reservation and making her way back to her son's 
hospital bed in Oklahoma. When Christine learned that her home State 
Senator was blocking food safety reform because of the cost, she 
immediately thought about the hundreds of thousands of dollars her 
middle-class family has spent on Richard's medical care.
  On behalf of her son, Christine stands with 89 percent of the 
American people who want Senator Coburn to stop blocking this food 
safety bill. She said she has a simple question:

       As the Senate is debating on S 510, I am taking an 
     emergency flight to the hospital to be with my son. He's been 
     admitted again with complications stemming from his E. coli 
     infection. We can delay this legislation no more.

  She writes:

       Something must be done. The time is now. How many more 
     victims must there be?

  That is the critical question.
  Is this a perfect bill? As I have said before and will say again, the 
only perfect legislation that I am aware of was tapped out on stone 
tablets and carried down a mountain by ``Senator Moses.'' We can 
improve this bill. We can entertain amendments that may improve this 
bill. But to stop us in our tracks and tell us we cannot even debate it 
or deliberate it while the Senate sits empty doing nothing is 
inexcusable while people are suffering and dying across America.
  We have a bill that has the support of the industry and the 
consumers. We have come forward to this point. We cannot turn back.
  That is why, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that, at a time 
to be determined by the majority leader, following consultation with 
the Republican leader, the Senate proceed to the consideration of 
Calendar No. 247, S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, and 
that when the bill is considered, it be under the following 
limitations: that general debate on the bill be limited to 2 hours, 
equally divided and controlled between Senators Harkin and Enzi or 
their designees; that the only amendments in order other than the 
committee-reported substitute be those listed in this agreement, with 
debate on each of the listed amendments limited to 30 minutes, with the 
time equally divided and controlled in the usual form; further, that 
when any of the listed amendments are offered for consideration, the 
reading of the amendments be considered waived and the amendments not 
be subject to division; Harkin-Enzi substitute amendment; Tester 
amendment regarding small farms and facilities; Harkin-Enzi amendment 
in reference to technical and conforming changes; and that once 
offered, the technical amendment be considered and agreed to and the 
motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; Coburn amendment in 
reference to offset for the cost of the bill; Feinstein amendment in 
reference to BPA; Leahy amendment in reference to criminal penalties; 
that upon disposition of the listed amendments up or down and the use 
or yielding back of all time, the Harkin-Enzi substitute amendment, as 
amended, be agreed to, the committee-reported substitute amendment, as 
amended, be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time, and 
the Senate then proceed to vote on passage of the bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I object and ask unanimous consent to be 
recognized after the majority whip finishes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  And the objection is heard.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, it is my understanding that Senator Coburn 
actually sees, as I do, the need for us to coordinate the food safety 
agencies and is proposing that we ask for a study for that purpose. I 
wish to join him in that effort. Asking for a study is a good thing, 
but while a study is underway and we are waiting for the report, people 
will be dying from food contamination.
  I hope we can engage in this study and move toward a single food 
safety agency. I am with him all the way. Let's save money in the 
process. And I think we can. We can come up with a professional, good 
agency in a bipartisan way. But unless and until that is done, we have 
to make reference to the obvious; that is, the current system is not 
safe enough for American families. As good as our food supply may be in 
America, we can do better. To stop now, after all of this work has been 
put into this effort, with the objection of

[[Page 16314]]

only one Senator, strikes me as unfair--unfair to the people across 
America who desperately need our protection.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, what is unfair in this country is the fact 
that we label bills to fix things and fix a lot of the symptoms, but we 
do not fix the underlying problem. We are going to spend several 
hundred million dollars when the bill ultimately goes through, and much 
of it will be well applied, but the underlying problem will never be 
fixed.
  The Senator mentioned we have 12 agencies--12 agencies across this 
government--responsible for food safety. What I would contend to my 
colleagues is that the same amount of money we spend now, if we spent 
it wisely, would give us a much safer food supply.
  All through the course of this debate, I have had staff at every 
meeting raising the consistent objections I have raised. At every 
meeting, one of my staffers has been there. They were ignored. I am not 
stopping this bill because it was ignored; I am stopping the bill 
because I do not think we are fixing the true underlying problem.
  Let me give you an example. Here is what Dr. Hamburg said. This is on 
the egg rule.

       We believe that had these rules been in place at an earlier 
     time it would have very likely enabled us to identify the 
     problems on this farm before this kind of outbreak occurred.

  How long did it take them to develop the rule? Ten years. It started 
with President Clinton asking that this be addressed. Robert Reich went 
and inspected and said it is unbelievable what has happened. And what 
happened is, he initiated it with the FDA, the start. Somebody ought to 
ask the question and hold accountable FDA taking 10 years to get a rule 
so we have safe eggs in this country. We did not ask that question. So 
the next thing that comes up after we pass a bill like this is that we 
are going to see another problem because we are not fixing the core 
problem.
  Let me read to you from the oversight hearings the Senate has 
conducted on food safety. I think I have them here. There was a full 
committee hearing on October 22, 2009, ``Keeping American Families 
Safe, Reforming the Food System.'' There was a full committee hearing 
developing a comprehensive response to food safety on December 4, 2007. 
And there was a Senate Appropriations Committee oversight hearing on 
Hallmark/Westland meat recall--a special hearing. There was not one 
hearing that said: FDA, what are you doing, how are you doing it, and 
why are you doing it that way? There was not one hearing that said: 
USDA, why in the world can't you get your act together? We did not do 
the structural oversight that is necessary to fix these problems.
  I am not denying that this bill will have some positive effect. But 
it will not solve the problem. So we will pass a bill, and then we will 
still have contaminated food, but we will have answered the questions 
of late. We can't keep running government that way.
  I appreciate sincerely Senator Durbin's efforts. We come from vastly 
different backgrounds. I don't question his integrity, his desire, or 
his goodwill to try to solve the problem. As he told me on the phone, I 
can't be involved in everything, so, therefore, I shouldn't participate 
in this. That is the implication. I am not saying the Senator said 
that, but the implication is, you can't be involved so, therefore, you 
can't know enough to be involved. Well, having run a $70 million-a-year 
business in the health care field, having managed hundreds upon 
hundreds upon hundreds of people, and being trained as a physician in 
practice for 25 years, I know a heck of a lot about food safety. What I 
do know is if you don't fix the problems in the underlying agencies 
that are responsible for food safety, it doesn't matter how many bills 
we bring up.
  There is a prohibition in this bill. Section 403, Jurisdiction 
Authorities:

       Nothing in this act or an amendment made by this act shall 
     be construed to alter the jurisdiction between the Secretary 
     of Agriculture and the Secretary of Health and Human Services 
     under applicable statutes, regulations, or agreements 
     regarding the products eligible for voluntary inspection 
     under this agreement.

  We actually are doing something wrong here--not just right. We are 
telling them they can't shift stuff around to solve the problem. Not 
only do we not do the vigorous oversight that is required to actually 
fix the real problems; we put up a roadblock, a silo back up and say, 
By the way, you can't do any of this together. That is in the bill.
  What has happened? The FDA Commissioner says had we put this rule 
out, this probably wouldn't have happened on the egg recall, salmonella 
enteritis. It wouldn't have happened. Where is the answer from the FDA? 
Where is the oversight hearing of the FDA on why it took them 10, 
almost 11 years to get a rule out on egg safety? That is my core 
objection.
  I want us to solve the problems. I don't have any problem with the 
issues about foreign inspection. Mandatory recall I don't have a 
problem with, although we have never had a food supplier in this 
country that has not recalled when asked to recall. So having a 
mandatory authority is a false claim because nobody has ever not 
recalled when they were asked to, because it is in their best interests 
to recall.
  My problems are characterized by this chart, when you think about the 
egg recall. The USDA knew what was happening on the farms in Iowa but 
said nothing to the FDA. The FDA didn't look to see, and Congress 
didn't want to hear about it. So we have a bill before us that does a 
lot of good things, but it doesn't fix the real problem. That is my 
basic complaint. We are treating the symptoms of the disease. My 
colleagues have heard my analogy before, but I am going to make it 
again. If you come in to see me, as a practicing physician, and you 
have fever and chills and cough and body aches and are short of breath, 
and I give you something to take care of your fever and chills; I give 
you something to suppress your cough; I actually make you feel better, 
but I don't diagnosis the fact that there is a pneumonia in your lung, 
you are going to get better for a little while and then you are going 
to get really sick. Then you come back. I have treated your symptoms 
the first time, and then I treat your pneumonia and I get you over 
that. Then I don't follow up after that to see what the real cause of 
the pneumonia is, which was a little tumor in your lung that caused 
blockage which caused the pneumonia. If I continue to treat symptoms, 
all I do is delay the time in which we get to the final fix for your 
problem. My analogy is I think that is what we are doing. I believe we 
have not been thorough enough. The intentions are great, but I don't 
think we have been thorough enough. I understand foodborne illnesses. I 
have treated a lot of them. I have had a lot of them. When I was in 
Iraq for 30 days, I had it for most of the time I was there.
  The other question this has raised is we can't keep doing this. We 
can't afford to keep doing this. We have more than enough money at the 
USDA and the FDA to do everything you want to do in this bill--more 
than enough. That is one of the things the American people are asking 
of us. We are going to make this point on a food safety bill, and I am 
fine with the heat I will take from the groups and the press on it, 
because I think the underlying principle is more important. It is easy 
to pass a bill that looks as if it does something. And even if it does 
something, if it passed on what we are going to spend when we don't 
address what we are spending wisely, we will never get out of the jam 
we put our kids in.
  To Senator Durbin's point: Yes, it is an authorization bill. The 
Senator from Illinois and Senator Harkin, as well as every member of my 
caucus and every member of your caucus, get a letter the first of every 
Congress saying I would absolutely object to any bill that increases 
authorizations in this Congress that are not offset with a reduction in 
less important, less priority items. I offered to do that to the 
majority leader. I offered to give that to him 2\1/2\ weeks ago. He 
hung up the

[[Page 16315]]

phone on me; wouldn't even say goodbye. I said, I will give you a list. 
How about the $500 million the U.S. Department of Agriculture pays out 
to dead farmers in crop payments--to dead farmers who have been dead 6, 
7, 8 years, still paying crop payments. We have plenty of money to pay 
for it. We don't want to do the hard work of getting rid of the things 
we should.
  What America is screaming for now is they want food safety, but they 
want security for their kids as well. If we continue this bad habit of 
ignoring the actual idea that there is a limitation on how much we can 
spend, we will never solve any of the critical problems, whether we 
have clean food or not.
  I do honor my two colleagues who are in the Chamber. They are men of 
great intent, honest intent, caring hearts, but I disagree on how we 
have gone about this. This isn't the first time I have heard the 
wonderful eloquence of Senator Durbin. He is great at what he says and 
how he says it. He is a very bright man. He makes his case well. But 
there are important things in this country that we are ignoring, and 
this bill is an example of it.
  Why in the world won't we fix the real problem? Why won't we ask--you 
know, the one thing that should happen--it amazes me. There is not a 
hearing scheduled on why it took 10 years to have an egg safety 
standard. We have allowed this. We have allowed it.
  The other point I wish to make is, yes, the money has to get 
appropriated. I agree with that. But we are going to spend this money. 
Senator Durbin, we are going to spend it, aren't we?
  Mr. DURBIN. Not unless we appropriate it.
  Mr. COBURN. Does the Senator have every intent to make sure it is 
appropriated?
  Mr. DURBIN. If we can find the money.
  Mr. COBURN. So wait a minute. If we can find the money.
  Mr. DURBIN. If we can find the money.
  Mr. COBURN. The earlier statements of this will solve the problem, 
but yet we are not going to find the money. It should be 100 percent 
that we are going to find the money to do this.
  Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. COBURN. I want to continue my point, if you don't mind. You have 
always been courteous to me and I will be courteous to you, but I wish 
to continue for a few minutes and then I will give my colleague the 
chance to respond.
  Mr. DURBIN. I would say to the Senator, I was going to ask him a 
question.
  Mr. COBURN. I will allow that in a few minutes.
  If this bill is that important, and the majority whip says we will 
fund it if we can find the money, rather than saying we are going to 
fund this because this is a priority--and he has the power to make sure 
that gets done. Don't let anybody kid you. If he wants this bill 
funded, he can get it funded. So the point is, either it is going to be 
funded and it is going to get spent and the argument about 
authorizations is bogus or there is going to be a real question on 
whether it is going to get funded. If there is a real question about 
whether it is going to get funded, then the importance of the issue 
isn't nearly as great as we have explained it to be, which goes back to 
an argument we have had for the 6 years I have been here.
  I understand you don't agree. I am a hardheaded guy from Oklahoma who 
actually believes we ought to make hard choices, we ought to downsize 
the government rather than grow it; and when we have an issue such as 
food safety, what we ought to do is hold accountable the agencies--let 
me say it again--we ought to hold accountable the agencies, because I 
am not sure that we don't have enough rules now. What I think we have 
is not enough effectiveness of the agencies and the dollars they spend. 
With the exception of foreign inspections, which I fully support--I 
fully support--anybody who wants to sell food in this country ought to 
pay for the inspections and we ought to be able to certify that it is 
safe. I have no problem with that. There are a lot of components of 
this bill I agree with. But I refuse to agree to a unanimous consent 
request until we start looking at the real problems underlying not just 
the FDA and USDA but the Pentagon, Health and Human Services, the 
Department of Justice. The waste in this government and our refusal to 
look at that waste and eliminate it so we can do good things is one of 
the reasons--not the only reason, one of the reasons--we find ourselves 
$13.4 trillion in debt.
  Ideally, how would we go about this? Because one of the complaints 
is: Coburn, you stop things in their tracks. How would I have done it 
differently? So I think I owe you an explanation. First of all, the 
tomatoes were never contaminated. They were thought to be contaminated. 
It was the jalapenos. So we, our agencies, identified falsely a food 
that wasn't contaminated. So the agency is responsible for the $350 
million cost for the tomatoes. That is a very important point. The 
incompetency of the agency cost $350 million, which is a very different 
story than my colleague from Illinois talked about. It was jalapeno 
peppers.
  So how should we go about this? Before we do one other thing on food 
safety, every one of those agencies ought to know we are looking over 
their backs all the time. That is the first thing. We should have 
routine oversight hearings on the appropriate committees three to four 
times a year. The second thing we ought to do is we ought to say, GAO, 
we want to know everybody who has anything to do with the quality of 
food in this country as far as a Federal agency and we want to know 
their line responsibilities, we want to know their authorities, we want 
to know X, Y, and Z, and their effectiveness. Because a GAO study at 
the Department of Agriculture, as well as the FDA, says they are 
incompetent at most of this stuff. I will be happy to give my 
colleagues the quotes. They lack the competency to carry out--how else 
do you explain that the FDA cost the State of Florida $350 million by 
falsely claiming that tomatoes weren't any good? That is incompetence. 
There is no excuse for it. There was no hearing held to hold them 
accountable. It is ignored in this bill.
  So how would we go about it? We would find out everybody who has 
anything to do with food safety. Then we would do what Senator Durbin 
wants to do. We would eliminate the duplication. We would make one line 
authority: This agency is responsible for all the food safety in this 
country. That is a marvelous goal, Senator Durbin. This bill delays 
that happening. He is on to the right thing.
  We need to get there, I agree. But when you go to Piggly Wiggly or 
Homeland, as we have in Oklahoma, and you go to the freezer section and 
buy a pizza for Friday night when--in Oklahoma, you are going to play 
dominos after high school football is over. If you buy a cheese pizza, 
the Department of Agriculture is responsible for that. But if you buy a 
pepperoni pizza, it is the FDA. I may have them reversed. I do have 
them reversed. The FDA is responsible for cheese pizzas. How does that 
make sense?
  It is a symptom of the disease in Washington. First of all, it is 
stupid. Second of all, it is inefficient. Third of all, it guarantees 
the two agencies are not going to be talking to each other.
  The Food and Drug Administration and the USDA have--I think my number 
is correct; I may be wrong--187 agreements for how they work across the 
field. Except you know what happened with regard to the egg situation. 
Nobody paid attention to the agreements. We have the rules. USDA did 
not tell the FDA. Then, finally, we have an egg producer--the State of 
Iowa has done tons of stuff to say this guy's quality is poor. Did USDA 
do anything about it? No. Did the FDA do anything about it? No.
  USDA knew there was a problem. It did not need any more inspections. 
They knew there was a problem. They did not communicate it to the FDA 
as per their protocol.
  What do we have going on here? We have a mess. As well-intentioned as 
this bill is and as hard as the Senators have worked on it on both 
sides of the

[[Page 16316]]

aisle, it does not fix the cancer in the lung that caused the pneumonia 
that caused the fever, cough, chills, and malaise of the patient. Until 
we start drilling down to get to the real problems, the real issues of 
food safety, we are going to spend a lot of money. We are going to 
create a whole lot more regulations. We are going to have another 200-
plus page bill.
  What we ought to say is, time out. Let's do some things. Let's have a 
one-page bill that can pass by UC today that says we are going to do 
safety inspections on foreign foods. Done. We can do it. That takes 
care of our foreign food.
  A good portion of our seafood is imported. It is farm raised. It is 
important. We can do that tomorrow. We can have sanctions and penalties 
and criminal penalties for Federal bureaucrats who do not follow the 
rules of their own agencies.
  Everything was in place on the egg situation. We did not execute. We 
did not carry the ball down the field. Here is what we know about the 
DeCoster Egg Farms. They are a habitual violator. They have had eight 
known run- ins or citations from State and Federal regulators. They 
were designated by the State of Iowa as a ``habitual violator.'' Robert 
Reich called the state of the farms simply atrocious.
  USDA inspections--I have a copy of the inspections--routinely noted 
unsafe and unsanitary conditions without communicating any of those 
concerns to the FDA.
  What we had was a failure to execute. It was seen. It was known. What 
we had in place did not work. But this bill does not fix that. It does 
not fix that.
  I have treated a lot of people with toxic e. coli in my life. That is 
what causes kidney failure. Salmonella hardly ever does that. It is not 
a fun disease to have. There is nothing in this bill that says we are 
going to prioritize pathogens. You see, e. coli, compared to all the 
rest of the pathogens, is much more important in terms of 
hospitalization, death, morbidity, and mortality. So any food safety 
bill ought to work on the most ravaging problem first, not treat them 
all the same. Yersinia pestis, shigella, and salmonella cause 
enteritis, that is true. Rarely will you have long-term effects from 
those. But from toxic e. coli, it is a whole different actor.
  We ought to prioritize what we do in food safety through the food 
safety problems that cause the major problems. We do not do that.
  I know I have disappointed my colleague from Illinois. I know he has 
worked hard on this bill. We have some very stark philosophical 
differences about how to make the government work better. I hope 
through the next few years to convince him more often than not to go in 
a different direction.
  I know Senator Harkin's heart is one of the softest and best in our 
body. If somebody has a problem, I don't care what it is, he is 
interested in it. For disappointing my colleague, I sincerely 
apologize. For standing on my principles and what I believe, I do not. 
I do not see a great future for our country if we do not start changing 
the way we do things, whether it is drilling down and looking at what 
the real problems are with the agencies and doing the appropriate 
oversight and taking priorities and getting rid of things that do not 
work and making things that do work work better.
  I worry about my grandkids, and I worry about all of our grandkids. 
With them at $43,702 today per man, woman, and child in this country, 
we cannot do it anymore. I am not going to do it anymore. I will be as 
compliant as I can be living within my principles, but I am just not 
going there. For that, I apologize. I apologize for disappointing my 
colleagues, but I sincerely regret we could not have solved some of 
these problems along the way.
  I yield the floor and yield to the Senator for a question, if he 
wishes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Hagan). The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I am going to yield to the Senator from 
Iowa in just a moment.
  I would like to offer to the Senator from Oklahoma a compromise and 
tell him I have spent much of the time he was speaking reading S. 3832, 
a one-page bill, which calls for a plan within 60 days from USDA and 
FDA and within 1 year a joint report from Congress, a GAO report. I am 
going to join him on this issue.
  What I would like to suggest is the following: Because I am as 
committed as he is to food safety, I would like to amend my request and 
make this a Coburn-Durbin amendment which will be offered, which I 
guarantee I will work night and day to get passed, so we address the 
overall issue. In the meantime, while we are spending 6 months or a 
year moving toward this goal, let's at least make the current system as 
safe as we can. Let's do everything we can to protect the people of 
this Nation.
  The Senator does not have to apologize to me. I will be here 
tomorrow. But this poor man in ICU in Oklahoma may not be, and other 
people like him.
  What I suggest to him is, I will join in a compromise. I will add an 
amendment to the bill and cosponsor his language in S. 3832 and ask my 
colleagues on this side of the aisle--all of them--to join us in voting 
for them if the Senator from Oklahoma will remove his objection so we 
can go forward on this important historic debate.
  Mr. COBURN. Madam President, I appreciate the Senator's offer, but I 
cannot do that. I also want him to know that this bill is not going to 
solve the problem of that gentleman from Owasso, OK. This bill is not 
going to solve that situation because we are not fixing the real 
problem.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I must reclaim my time and say to the 
Senator from Oklahoma, he cannot tell me how badly he feels for these 
victims and then stop the bill with which we are trying to protect 
them.
  The Senator cannot tell me he wants reform and then reject it. The 
bottom line is the description he has given is about the USDA, and this 
bill is not about that agency. It is about the FDA.
  I say to the Senator from Oklahoma, I agree with him. I want to help 
him. But if he will not allow us to bring to the floor a bill on which 
we worked for a year and a half, if he will not offer an amendment 
along the lines suggested, then all he is doing is saying no.
  If he is saying we cannot afford safe food in America, I disagree. I 
think we can afford it, and I am willing to cut other spending to pay 
for it. That is the only way it can get through the appropriations 
process.
  But to just say no after all the work that has gone into it because 
he does not happen to like it--if the Senator from Oklahoma does not 
like it, offer his amendment. If it is a good idea, the Senate will 
accept it. If he does not have an amendment, then he is like me on 
Monday night watching football when the Bears play the Packers deciding 
what Jay Cutler should be doing as quarterback. It is pretty easy from 
that armchair.
  I want the Senator from Oklahoma to come down to the field and offer 
his amendment, be part of the conversation. Don't just stand there and 
say no. As he says no, people will suffer and some will die. I think 
that is fundamentally unfair.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. Madam President, again, if I truly felt this bill was 
going to solve those problems, I would be out here supporting it. I do 
not think so. We have an inherent disagreement.
  The Senator from Illinois can file a cloture motion any time he wants 
to proceed to this bill. He can file it today, and we can have a 
cloture vote next week--we are not going to be doing anything next week 
anyway--and we can go to the bill. File the cloture motion, if that is 
how he feels about the bill and he thinks I am dead wrong. File the 
cloture motion, get the votes, and do it.
  What we are hearing is we want it to pass in a short period of time 
so there cannot be the real debate there needs to be on the problems in 
this country on food safety. That is what we just heard.
  We have been talking about this issue. We could have been here 
tomorrow debating this bill. The fact is, they did not file a cloture 
motion. They filed cloture motions 179 other times

[[Page 16317]]

this Congress, more than any other Congress in the history, and the 
vast majority of them less than 24 hours after the bill was introduced.
  If the Senator really wants to have the debate, put the bill on the 
floor, file cloture, and have the debate. I will debate this for 30 
hours.
  Washington is great about saying they are fixing things. They are 
great about passing bills. They are not great about fixing things 
because they fix the symptoms, not the real disease. That is the 
problem with this bill. It does not drill down and fix the real 
disease.
  My hope is that we can fix the real disease and that we will have the 
legitimate, tough hearings on why and how and what is needed to be 
changed in the agencies, not more regulations, not more money, but 
holding the agencies accountable, which we have not done. That is how 
Washington works. If there is a problem, we do not look at what we are 
doing already, we just create an answer for what we think needs to be 
done rather than holding people accountable. That is why we have a $3.9 
trillion budget. That is why our kids are bankrupt or getting ready to 
be because we continue to make the same mistakes.
  I do not apologize for my principles on this issue. If, in fact, we 
will ever get to where we fix the real problems in the Congress, my 
colleague will find me as docile and compliant as any other Member of 
the body. But do not tell me to treat pneumonia with an aspirin because 
that is exactly what we are doing with this bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, first of all, to my friend from Oklahoma 
before he leaves the floor, I thank him for his kind words. I 
appreciate that very much. He is a very valuable member of our 
committee. We have done work together in the past.
  I say to my friend from Oklahoma, I agree with a lot of what he said. 
This bill is not going to solve all our problems. It may not solve a 
majority of our problems. It will solve some of them.
  The Senator is right. We read about these crazy pizza things--
Agriculture has one, FDA has the others. It is a crazy quilt work of 
things.
  I say to my friend from Oklahoma, I am about as frustrated as you 
are. I have been chairman of Ag and I am chairman of HELP. When I am on 
Ag and they want to get some stuff to have jurisdiction over, then the 
people at Health and Human Services step in and they say no. Now I am 
on HELP and we want to get more jurisdiction for FDA and Ag says no. It 
drives you nuts sometimes. So you have these interlocks that have been 
built up over the years, and, yes, we have a crazy patchwork quilt.
  I would say forthrightly that what we need in this country, I 
believe, after having been through this for 35 years on the Ag 
Committee in both the House and Senate and now in the HELP Committee 
for 22 or 23 years there, we need a single food safety agency in 
America that would pull from Ag and pull from FDA and set up a food 
safety agency.
  I would say to my friend that agriculture has a lot of things on 
their plate. They have exports, they have farms, they have a lot of 
stuff on agriculture. FDA, they have drugs and all the stuff with drugs 
that they have to do--new drugs and investigational new drugs and all 
this other stuff and then they have some foodstuff. Foodstuff always 
gets kind of left behind. I see the same thing in agriculture. They 
have so many other things on their plate that takes so much money, the 
foodstuff gets kind of left behind.
  So I think what we ought to do, if you want to drill down, is to get 
rid of all that and put it in one food safety agency. I have proffered 
this in the past, but I don't find much support for that. The 
institutional biases against that are tremendous. So I say to my 
friend: You are right. This bill will not solve all our problems, but I 
think it is a good step. I think it is a good step forward. It has 
strong bipartisan support. It has the support of industry and 
consumers, and that doesn't happen too often around here.
  There is that old saying: Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the 
good. I hear my friend from Oklahoma, and what he is saying is we ought 
to have a more perfect system than what we have. I agree. We ought to 
have a more perfect system, but I can't get that done. We can't get 
that done here. But we can do some good things and we can take some 
steps to make it better than what it is and that is what this bill 
does.
  Mr. COBURN. Madam President, if the Senator will yield, I would just 
say that I think we ought to fix the real problems. By fixing the 
symptoms, we delay the time in which we fix the real problems, and I 
think that is what we are doing.
  I thank the Senator.
  Mr. HARKIN. Well, I agree we are not getting to the nub of it, but it 
is a good step forward. I mean, sometimes you do have to treat the 
symptoms before you can get to the underlying cause. I am not a doctor. 
I don't want to practice medicine without a license.
  I would just say again--to repeat--this bill is a major step forward. 
It will not solve all the problems. I can understand that, and I think 
there is a lot of other things we need to do, but you have to do what 
is possible around here. Politics is the art of the possible--to try to 
move the ball forward, to make changes that are more beneficial than 
detrimental, and I believe that is what this bill does.
  We have worked long and hard. I see my colleague, Senator Enzi, is on 
the floor. I couldn't ask for a better friend and a better ranking 
member to work with. We reported this bill out last November without 
one dissenting vote--a voice vote.
  I am sorry the Senator from Oklahoma had to leave, but I would just 
say that he did not object. He is on our committee, and he did not 
object to reporting out the bill. We had hearings, a markup, and we 
went through all the right and normal procedures. Then, since last 
November, our staffs--Senator Enzi's staff, my staff, and others, 
Senator Gregg's staff, I know, Senator Burr's staff--have been 
involved, and we have too personally--the Senators have been involved 
in this since at least the first of the year--working out the problems 
and trying to get down to a bill that would have widespread support on 
the floor.
  Again, on something such as this, where we want to tackle a problem 
that is certainly not in any way partisan, you would like to get broad 
support for it. We kind of like to get something that would have a lot 
of folks, rather than a few, in order to send a strong signal that the 
Congress wants to make changes in the way we inspect food in this 
country.
  I would say this bill we have--if this bill were to come to the 
floor--would get over 90 votes. I bet it would get over 90 votes. Maybe 
it would get 95, maybe 98, I don't know, but there would certainly be 
over 90 votes. So we have strong bipartisan support. As I said, we have 
the industry that supports it and the consumers. That doesn't happen a 
lot around here.
  I can understand why both sides support it. Senator Enzi, Senator 
Gregg, Senator Burr, myself, Senator Durbin's staff, Senator Dodd, and 
others on our side have been working together, and I think we have a 
good bill. Is it perfect? No, it is not perfect. Is it going to solve 
every single problem the Senator from Oklahoma brought up? No, it is 
not. I am not Pollyannaish about this. But we do what is the art of the 
possible. We do what we can to make the system work better, to make 
sure we have less foodborne illnesses than what we have today. This 
bill will do that, not 100 percent, but it will sure cut down on the 
number of foodborne illnesses in this country.
  This is long overdue. It is long overdue. My goodness, the last time 
we addressed this issue on food inspection, under the jurisdiction of 
the FDA, was 1938. If I am not mistaken, it was in 1938. I wasn't born 
until 1939, and we haven't even visited this since 1938. Think of the 
changes that have taken place in our country in the way we process and 
ship food. My gosh, when these were passed in 1938, my own family had 
our own garden, we canned our own vegetables, we canned our own

[[Page 16318]]

meat. Yes, we canned meat, in glass jars, by the way.
  We process food differently now. We didn't buy food from other 
countries or halfway across the country. We ate locally. We grew our 
own food. But times have changed, and we like it now. I like the fact 
that I can buy strawberries in the middle of the winter in Washington 
or I can buy a mango sometimes when I want one or bananas and things 
such as that. It is a wonderful system of making food available. What 
is not so wonderful is how that food is inspected as it goes through 
the growing, the picking, the processing, the shipping, the packaging, 
and then on to the consumer. That is what is not working well, and that 
is what this bill does address.
  Again, the objection the Senator had in terms of it not being paid 
for, this is an authorization bill, not a spending bill. I wish to 
clear up a few things. I know my friend from Wyoming is here, and I 
want to hurry up to give him the floor, but just a couple of things I 
wish to cover for the record.
  No. 1, on the deficit, there has been some talk about this increasing 
the deficit. I wish to make this very clear, precisely clear, that 
according to the CBO there will be no deficit increase for 10 years on 
this bill. I wish to make that point. In fact, we added language, at 
Senator Coburn's request, to have Health and Human Services review its 
own programs to trim any fat to help ensure fiscal responsibility and 
we have a reporting system and other things the Senator from Oklahoma 
wanted and we put in the bill.
  The next-to-the-last thing I wish to say is this. The food industry 
wants this bill. Why do they want it? Well, on the one hand, people get 
sick and people die. On the other hand, the food industry suffers too. 
First of all, a lot of times they get sued and they have to pay out big 
compensations. But, secondly, the disruption costs them a lot of money. 
When salmonella led to the recall of tomatoes, the entire Florida 
industry suffered, losing over $500 million in revenue--$500 million. 
When we had E. coli in spinach, growers lost $350 million. So they have 
an interest also in making sure we have a good food inspection system, 
and that is why they are for this bill.
  I have letters from the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the U.S. 
Chamber of Commerce, National Restaurant Association, Consumers Union, 
PEW Charitable Trust, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, 
Trust for America's Health.
  It is a rare thing when I can say that both the Chamber of Commerce 
and the Center for Science in the Public Interest are on the same page. 
You have pretty broad support. So it is a shame we can't move this bill 
forward. It is needed.
  I wish to also pay my respects to Senator Durbin. He has been working 
on this issue, literally, I know for the last 10 years. He has been 
bugging me about it for 10 years, and I didn't even have the power to 
do anything about it. So I know he has been insistent we work on this 
for a long time. Our committee has taken it up under Senator Enzi's 
leadership, then later under Senator Kennedy, and now it falls to me, 
as chairman, to work together on it in a very good bipartisan way.
  Madam President, on November 18, 2009, the Senate Committee on 
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions reported out S. 510, the FDA 
Food Safety Modernization Act, without a single dissenting vote. Since 
that time, the bipartisan group of cosponsors--Senators Durbin, Dodd, 
and I on the Democratic side, and Senators Enzi, Gregg, and Burr on the 
Republican side--have continued to work with Senators on both sides of 
the aisle to refine and improve this much needed legislation.
  Legislation to reform our Nation's outdated food safety system is 
long overdue. And that is why I am so deeply disappointed that after 
all of this work, the Senator from Oklahoma has decided he will not 
allow us to move the bill forward.
  I understand that Senator Coburn's primary objection to the 
legislation is that it is not paid for. I think that objection is 
misguided, for reasons that I will explain. But I would also like to 
emphasize that the unanimous consent agreement proposed yesterday by 
the majority leader, and objected to by Senator Coburn, would have 
allowed the Senator to have an up or down vote on an amendment to 
offset the cost of the bill, notwithstanding the fact that the bill 
contains no mandatory spending.
  I know Senator Coburn states that this bill will contribute to the 
federal deficit. However, I have to respectfully disagree. In fact, as 
this chart clearly shows, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office 
has indicated that this legislation does not contribute to the Federal 
deficit.
  Our bill has no mandatory spending--only authorized spending. This 
legislation, like countless others that have passed this year, will be 
subject to the annual budget and appropriations process.
  Furthermore, during the negotiations on the bill, we added language 
at Senator Coburn's REQUEST to have HHS review its own programs to trim 
any fat to help ensure fiscal responsibility. The Secretary is required 
to annually report her findings to Congress on these programs' 
effectiveness in achieving their goals.
  Conservative Republicans like Senators Gregg, Enzi, and Burr all 
support this bill. I am again disappointed that Senator Coburn won't 
even let us consider it on the Senate floor, even though we have agreed 
to give him an opportunity to offer his amendment to the bill.
  While I am here on the floor today, I would like to address some 
other misstatements that I have heard about this legislation as we have 
worked over these past weeks and months to bring it to the floor. 
First, there are claims that this bipartisan legislation is harmful and 
burdensome to the food industry. I find that very hard to believe. This 
legislation has widespread support amongst industry and consumer 
groups. The reality is that every time there is an outbreak of 
foodborne illness, the food industry suffers, as consumers lose 
confidence in the safety of our food supply.
  When salmonella contamination led to the recall of tomatoes, the 
entire Florida tomato industry suffered, losing over $500 million in 
revenue.
  And during the 2006 spinach e. coli contamination that originated at 
a single farm, the spinach industry lost $350 million.
  The good actors in the food industry already take steps to prevent 
food borne illness, but the entire industry suffers when FDA does not 
have sufficient authority to ensure that all processors will sell safe 
food.
  I have received letters from the Grocery Manufacturing Association, 
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Restaurant Association, The PEW 
Charitable Trust, Consumers Union, Center for Science in the Public 
Interest, and Trust for America's Health, to name a few. It is a rarity 
when I can say that both the Chamber of Commerce and CSPI are on the 
same page. Here are several letters of support by both groups and a 
joint letter that both industry and consumer groups have signed. Let me 
read an excerpt from the joint letter:

       Our organizations--representing the food industry, 
     consumers, and the public-health community--urge you to bring 
     S. 510 to the floor, and we will continue to work with 
     Congress for the enactment of food safety legislation that 
     better protects consumers, restores their confidence in the 
     safety of the food they eat, and addresses the challenges 
     posed by our global food supply.
           Sincerely,
         American Beverage Association, American Frozen Food 
           Institute, American Public Health Association, Center 
           for Foodborne Illness Research & National Restaurant 
           Association, The PEW Charitable Trusts, Trust for 
           America's Health, Snack Food Association, S.T.O.P. Safe 
           Tables Our Priority, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, U.S. 
           Public Interest Research Group.
         National Association of Manufacturers, National Coffee 
           Association of the USA, National Confectioners 
           Association, National Consumer League Education, Center 
           for Science in the Public Interest, Consumer Federation 
           of America, Consumers Union, Food Marketing Institute, 
           Grocery Manufacturers Association, International 
           Bottled Water Association, International Dairy Foods 
           Association.


[[Page 16319]]


  Madam President, Senators often talk about the importance of 
addressing so-called ``kitchen table'' issues''--the practical, 
everyday concerns of working Americans. Well, food safety is literally 
a ``kitchen table'' issue. And it couldn't be more urgent or overdue. 
It is shocking to think that the last comprehensive overhaul of 
America's food safety system was in 1938--more than seven decades ago.
  On the whole, Americans enjoy safe and wholesome food. The problem is 
that ``on the whole'' is just not good enough.
  As you can see from this chart, recent food-borne outbreaks in 
America have been wide in scope and have had a devastating impact on 
public health.
  When kids die from eating peanut-butter sandwiches their mothers pack 
for lunch, we have a problem. When people get sick--and many die--from 
eating bagged spinach and lettuce, we have a problem. When cookie dough 
sold in supermarkets contains deadly E. coli, we have a problem. When 
1,000 Americans get sick from eggs that have been recalled for possible 
salmonella contamination, it is undeniable that we have a problem.
  As you can see from this chart, the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention estimate that foodborne illnesses cause approximately 76 
million illnesses a year, including 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 
deaths.
  According to Georgetown University, these foodborne illnesses costs 
the United States $152 billion per year in medical expenses, lost 
productivity, and disability.
  Those numbers are just staggering. This is like learning that, each 
year, nearly 200,000 people in the United States die because of medical 
errors and hospital-acquired infections--most of them totally 
preventable.
  As this chart shows, the cost of foodborne illnesses in my home State 
of Iowa alone is nearly $1.5 billion per year.
  These aren't just numbers, these are real people. Real people like 
Kayla from Monroe, IA. On October 22, 2007, Kayla turned 14 and passed 
her driver's test. The next day she stayed home with a foodborne 
illness and was admitted to Pella Community Hospital when her symptoms 
worsened. She did not respond to antibiotics and within a week her 
kidneys began to fail. Kayla was transferred to Blank Children's 
Hospital for dialysis, but her condition continued to deteriorate. She 
suffered a seizure and began to have heart problems. Just a few days 
later Kayla's brain activity stopped and her parents made the painful 
decision to take their beautiful 14-year-old daughter off life support.
  These things are totally intolerable. And yet, apparently, we 
tolerate them.
  Well, no more. We can no longer tolerate the unnecessary pain, 
suffering, and death caused by America's antiquated, inadequate food 
safety system.
  Let's put it plainly: Our current regulatory system is broken. It 
does not adequately protect Americans from serious, widespread 
foodborne illnesses.
  Bear in mind that, at the beginning of the 20th century, Americans 
ate a much simpler fare--and, most of the time, they prepared meals 
from basic ingredients in their own homes, with their own hands.
  Today, our meals have grown more complex, with much more varied 
ingredients and diverse methods of preparation. By the time raw 
agricultural products find their way to our dinner plates, multiple 
intermediate steps and processes have taken place. Food ingredients 
typically travel thousands of miles from farms to factories to fork and 
they are intermingled and mixed together along the way.
  We love today's broader selection of fresh foods available year-
round. But this brings with it major new food safety challenges. For 
instance, we rely more on foods imported from countries with less 
rigorous inspection rates and different production standards and 
conditions than our own.
  Yet despite dramatic changes in our tastes, as well as in methods of 
production and distribution, our food safety laws have not changed. The 
U.S. regulatory system has failed to incorporate the latest scientific 
research on ways to make and keep food safe. Another shortcoming: Food 
safety agencies are still encumbered by methods that often allocate 
disproportionate resources to activities that do little to make our 
food safer. FDA's own subcommittee on Science and Technology concluded 
in 2007 that FDA does not currently have the capacity to ensure the 
safety of our food.
  OK, so what do we need to do?
  For starters, we need improved processes to prevent the contamination 
of foods and improved methods to provide safe food to consumers. To 
achieve this, more testing and better methods of tracking food can be 
utilized to verify that the processes are working.
  Thirty years ago, the Nation had 70,000 food processors and the FDA 
inspectors made only 35,000 visits a year to cover these processors. 
Even that level of oversight was inadequate. But today, a full decade 
into the 21st century, we have 150,000 food processors, twice as many 
plants, and the problem has grown far worse. Today FDA inspectors make 
just 6,700 visits each year; only one-fifth as many visits as they made 
three decades ago. This is absurdly inadequate. It is a wide-open door 
to an endless series of outbreaks of foodborne illness.
  As this chart shows, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act overhauls 
our food safety system in four critical ways:
  It improves prevention of food safety problems, improves detection of 
response to foodborne illness outbreaks when they do occur, enhances 
our Nation's food defense capabilities, and increases FDA resources.
  With the most recent recall for possible Salmonella contamination in 
at least 550 million eggs, we have yet another example of how this food 
safety bill, had it been in place, could have improved the FDA's 
ability to prevent and respond to the outbreak. This bill includes the 
following provisions that would have been beneficial to respond to this 
contamination and prevent future contamination:
  It requires stronger trace back provisions so the contamination 
source and affected egg products could have been more readily and 
quickly identified.
  It provides the FDA with mandatory recall authority in the event that 
businesses do not voluntarily recall products.
  It requires retailers to notify consumers if they have sold food that 
has been recalled so consumers may have been aware of the contamination 
sooner.
  It provides stronger disease surveillance so the outbreak may have 
been discovered earlier. It includes stronger enforcement provisions 
that would generally deter producers from cutting corners on food 
safety so the contamination may have been prevented or detected sooner.
  It gives the FDA increased access to company records to identify 
contaminated foods so the likelihood of contamination may have been 
minimized.
  The bill before the Senate today will also dramatically increase FDA 
inspections at all food facilities. And it does much more. It will give 
FDA the following new authorities:
  It requires all food facilities to have in place preventive plans to 
address identified hazards and to prevent adulteration; and it gives 
FDA access to those plans.
  It expands FDA's access to records in a food emergency.
  It requires importers to verify the safety of imported food.
  It strengthens surveillance systems to detect foodborne illnesses.
  It requires the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human 
Services to establish a pilot project to test and evaluate new methods 
for rapidly tracking foods in the event of a foodborne illness 
outbreak.
  And, as I previously mentioned, this bill gives FDA the authority to 
order a mandatory recall of food.
  I want to say a word about the impact of this legislation on farms 
and small processors. I have long said that our new regulations should 
be effective, but not excessively burdensome. I am proud to say that 
this legislation comprehensively modernizes our food safety system, but 
does so without injury to farms and small processors. There are 
requirements throughout

[[Page 16320]]

this bill to assure that the compliance burdens on farms and small 
processors are minimized to the extent practicable, and the legislation 
directs FDA to exempt both small processors and farms from certain 
provisions of this bill if they are engaged in low-risk activities.
  As this chart shows, this bill makes several accommodations to 
address the concerns of small businesses. We have included language to 
ensure that state and federal personnel help educate small businesses 
about the new regulations and help folks comply with these regulations. 
This approach is tied to risk, grounded in common sense, and set up to 
help everyone succeed. I am confident we have addressed the legitimate 
concerns we have heard from small business owners
  This food safety bill has been bipartisan from the beginning. It is 
an important, measured, and necessary effort to modernize our food 
safety system and protect American consumers across the country from 
foodborne illness.
  I hope we can find a path forward and move this critical legislation 
as soon as possible.
  I have some letters here, Madam President, and I also ask unanimous 
consent to have these printed in the Record at the end of my comments 
in support of this bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. HARKIN. It is a shame we can't move this forward. Like I said, it 
would get over 90 votes. I think we could dispose of a couple 
amendments fairly rapidly. I don't think it would take much time at all 
to move this legislation. So I am hopeful that even though we can't 
take it up now, maybe we can work with the Senator from Oklahoma, 
perhaps work something out to get some kind of agreement to get this 
moving forward.
  As I yield the floor, Madam President, I will recognize and thank my 
colleague from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, who has also worked diligently 
for a long time, and his staff. I will tell him we will continue to 
work on this bill. We will continue to try to see what we can do to 
overcome some of these bumps in the road and try to get this bill 
through.
  So I thank my friend from Wyoming for his great leadership and his 
working relationship specifically on this bill but on a lot of other 
things too.

                               Exhibit 1

                                               September 15, 2010.
     Senator Harry Reid,
     Office of the Senate Majority Leader, Capitol Building, 
         Washington, DC.
     Senator Mitch McConnell,
     Office of the Senate Minority Leader, Capitol Building, 
         Washington, DC.
       Dear Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell: 
     Our organizations are writing to urge you to schedule a vote 
     on S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, at 
     the soonest possible date. The HELP Committee approved a 
     strong, bipartisan bill in November, and we believe that a 
     vote would keep the momentum going for enactment of landmark 
     food-safety legislation.
       Strong food-safety legislation will reduce the risk of 
     contamination and thereby better protect public health and 
     safety, raise the bar for the food industry, and deter bad 
     actors. S. 510 will provide the U.S. Food and Drug 
     Administration (FDA) with the resources and authorities the 
     agency needs to help make prevention the focus of our food 
     safety strategies. Among other things, this legislation 
     requires food companies to develop a food safety plan; it 
     improves the safety of imported food and food ingredients; 
     and it adopts a risk-based approach to inspection.
       Our organizations--representing the food industry, 
     consumers, and the public-health community--urge you to bring 
     S. 510 to the floor, and we will continue to work with 
     Congress for the enactment of food safety legislation that 
     better protects consumers, restores their confidence in the 
     safety of the food they eat, and addresses the challenges 
     posed by our global food supply.
           Sincerely,
         American Beverage Association, American Frozen Food 
           Institute, Center for Foodborne Illness Research & 
           Education, Center for Science in the Public Interest, 
           Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Food 
           Marketing Institute, Grocery Manufacturers Association, 
           International Bottled Water Association, International 
           Dairy Foods Association, National Association of 
           Manufacturers, National Coffee Association of U.S.A., 
           Inc., National Confectioners Association, National 
           Consumers League, National Restaurant Association, The 
           PEW Charitable Trusts, Trust for America's Health, 
           Snack Food Association, S.T.O.P Safe Tables Our 
           Priority, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Public 
           Interest Research Group.
                                  ____

                                                Center for Science


                                       in the Public Interest,

                                Washington, DC, September 8, 2010.
     Hon. Richard Durbin,
     U.S. Senator, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Judd Gregg,
     U.S. Senator, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senators Durbin and Gregg: The Center for Science in 
     the Public Interest (CSPI) supports the bipartisan agreement 
     on a manager's amendment to S. 510, the FDA Food Safety 
     Modernization Act, and urges the Senate to pass S. 510 (as 
     amended) at the earliest possible date. CSPI is a nonprofit 
     health advocacy and education organization focused on 
     nutrition, food safety, and alcohol issues, and supported by 
     the 900,000 member/subscribers to its Nutrition Action 
     HealthLetter.
       The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act is a critically 
     needed update to our 70-year-old food safety laws. Today, 
     millions of consumers suffer preventable food-borne 
     illnesses, hospitalizing hundreds of thousands and causing 
     thousands of pre-mature deaths. Our member/subscribers, 
     seeing recurring news of outbreaks and recalls, identify the 
     need for Congress to fix our food safety system as a top 
     priority. Your legislation would do this by providing the 
     Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with a mandate to prevent 
     foodborne illness, requiring companies to implement food 
     safety plans, setting standards for high-risk foods, 
     establishing more frequent inspections, giving FDA authority 
     to recall dangerous foods, and ensuring imported food meets 
     the same standards as food produced here. These changes 
     provide FDA with the modern tools it needs to assure 
     consumers that food they buy is safe to eat.
       We appreciate the hard work by the bipartisan cosponsors of 
     the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act to reach agreement on 
     legislation that will protect the public from foodborne 
     disease. We urge the Senate to complete work on this 
     important legislation.
           Sincerely,
     David W. Plunkett,
       Senior Staff Attorney.
     Caroline Smith DeWaal,
       Food Safety Director.
                                  ____



                                     Food Marketing Institute,

                                Arlington, VA, September 13, 2010.
     Hon. Richard Durbin,
     Hart Senate Office Bldg,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Judd Gregg
     Russell Senate Office Bldg,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Durbin and Senator Gregg: On behalf of the 
     Food Marketing Institute (FMI) and its 1,500 food retail and 
     wholesale member companies, I would like to express our 
     strong support for S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization 
     Act.
       FMI members operate approximately 26,000 retail food stores 
     with combined annual sales of roughly $680 billion, 
     representing three quarters of all retail food store sales in 
     the United States. The most important goal for these 
     companies is ensuring that the products they sell are safe, 
     affordable and of the highest quality as possible. As the 
     purchasing agent for the consumer and the final link in the 
     supply chain, the supermarket industry continually seeks ways 
     to work with our suppliers and government to enhance the 
     safety of the food supply.
       We applaud your leadership and the sponsors of this 
     legislation for working in a bipartisan manner to develop a 
     bill that will help assist us in this endeavor by ensuring 
     that FDA has the necessary authority, resources and 
     commitment to its food protection responsibilities.
       We are particularly pleased with the legislation's 
     aggressive focus on prevention. Preventing food safety 
     problems from occurring by mitigating risk will have the 
     greatest impact on improving food safety. In addition we 
     support:
       The requirement to have food safety plans in place;
       The granting of mandatory recall authority to the FDA;
       FDA working with industry to develop enhanced traceability 
     systems;
       The recognition of accredited third-party programs to help 
     supplement FDA efforts; and
       The flexibility provided to help prevent one-size-fits-all 
     solutions to improving food safety.
       Each of these provisions are important building blocks in 
     creating a more effective and efficient food safety system. 
     FMI values the public-private relationship that we share with 
     the government to protect the nation's food supply and look 
     forward to continuing to work with you and your colleagues to 
     enact meaningful food safety legislation.
           Regards,
                                                 Jennifer Hatcher,
                      Senior Vice President, Government Relations.

[[Page 16321]]

     
                                  ____
                                           Food & Water Watch,

                               Washington, DC, September 13, 2010.
     Hon. Richard Durbin,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Judd Gregg,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senators Durbin and Gregg: On behalf of the non-profit 
     consumer organization Food & Water Watch, I am writing to 
     urge the U.S. Senate to pass S. 510, The FDA Food Safety 
     Modernization Act, as soon as it reconvenes this week so that 
     it can be conferenced and reconciled with its House companion 
     bill, H.R. 2749, The FDA Food Safety Enhancement Act.
       The bill that you have authored contains many strong 
     features that will strengthen the Food and Drug 
     Administration's (FDA) ability to regulate food safety for 
     the products it regulates:
       It will require food processors to establish food safety 
     plans that will include preventive control measures to 
     mitigate the possibility of adulterated food from entering 
     the food supply;
       The bill will improve FDA's ability to police the safety of 
     the ever-growing volume of food imports;
       S. 510 gives the FDA the authority to establish performance 
     standards on the food industry to achieve pathogen reduction 
     targets;
       The bill gives FDA the authority to recall adulterated food 
     items when a company refuses to do so voluntarily.
       We are concerned, however, with the inspection frequency 
     that is included in the Managers Amendment that will be 
     offered as a substitute to the version of S. 510 that was 
     reported out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and 
     Pensions Committee last fall. While the language in the 
     Managers Amendment may in fact reduce the time between FDA 
     inspections of food facilities, we still believe that an 
     inspection frequency of once every five years for high-risk 
     food plants and every seven years for low-risk plants is 
     woefully inadequate. We remain unconvinced that had all of 
     the other provisions in S. 510 had been in place at the time 
     of the massive Wright County Egg and Hillandale Egg Companies 
     recalls that we would have not had a similar food borne 
     illness outbreaks occur because these two firms would not 
     have been receiving FDA inspections frequently enough to 
     ensure that they were complying with the law. Only with 
     adequate enforcement of food safety laws and regulations will 
     we see compliance with those standards by industry.
       We are also sympathetic to the calls from small processors 
     and small farmers who are fearful, that some of the 
     provisions of S. 510 will cause undue burdens on them. We 
     applaud the inclusion in the Managers Amendment of a 
     technical assistance program for small processors and farmers 
     and direction to FDA to take into account the impact on small 
     business when the agency drafts its food safety regulations. 
     We also believe that there are merits to the provisions in 
     the amendment that has been crafted by Senator Jon Tester 
     that those small processors and farmers who sell most of 
     their products directly to consumers, restaurants, and other 
     local businesses should not be subject to all provisions of 
     the bill in light of the fact that the supply chain is very 
     short. It is our understanding that additional consumer 
     protections have been added to Senator Tester's amendment, so 
     we strongly urge your support for its inclusion in the final 
     bill passed by the Senate,
       We commend your efforts to bring this bill to the Senate 
     floor, This bill has enjoyed bipartisan support from its 
     inception and it is a credit to those who have taken a 
     leadership role in this legislation's development.
       Should there be questions regarding this letter, please 
     feel free to contact me,
           Sincerely,
                                                   Wenonah Hauter,
     Executive Director.
                                  ____



                                   Trust for America's Health,

                                                September 8, 2010.
     Senator Richard Durbin,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
     Senator Judd Gregg,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senators Durbin and Gregg: Trust for America's Health 
     (TFAH), a nonprofit, nonpartisan public health advocacy 
     organization, would like to express our strong support for 
     immediate Senate passage of the FDA Food Safety Modernization 
     Act (S. 510). Although every American depends on the safety 
     of the food they serve to their families, the Food and Drug 
     Administration (FDA) lacks the tools to ensure that safety. 
     S. 510 would finally help bring the FDA into the 21st 
     century.
       Approximately 76 million Americans--one in four--are 
     sickened by foodborne disease each year. Of these, an 
     estimated 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die. A recent 
     study by Ohio State University found that foodborne illnesses 
     cost the U.S. economy an estimated $152 billion annually. 
     With multiple severe food outbreaks in recent years, it is 
     urgent that the Senate take this step to keep Americans safe.
       The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act would place more 
     emphasis on prevention of foodborne illness and give the FDA 
     new authorities to address food safety problems. Under this 
     legislation, food processors would be required to identify 
     potential hazards in their production processes and implement 
     preventive programs to eliminate those hazards. Additionally, 
     the bill would require FDA to inspect all food facilities 
     more frequently and give FDA mandatory recall authority of 
     contaminated food. S. 510 is a bipartisan bill, with 
     widespread support from industry, consumer groups, and public 
     health organizations. The bill passed the Senate HELP 
     Committee with a unanimous voice vote, and food safety 
     legislation passed the House last year with overwhelming 
     bipartisan support.
       We thank you for your strong leadership on this 
     legislation. If you have any questions, please do not 
     hesitate to contact TFAH's Government Relations Manager, Dara 
     Alpert Lieberman.
           Sincerely,
                                               Jeffrey Levi, Ph.D,
     Executive Director.
                                  ____

                                              Department of Health


                                           and Human Services,

                                               September 10, 2010.
       Dear Member of Congress, The events of the past two weeks 
     have illustrated a pattern that is all too familiar. Local 
     health officials around the country begin to see an uptick in 
     illnesses from a particular source. As they notify the 
     Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, epidemiologists 
     begin to see a pattern in the illness and outbreak reports, 
     identify a food as the likely cause, and notify the Food and 
     Drug Administration (FDA). FDA, state health and local 
     officials then deploy investigators across the country, 
     furiously searching for the source of the illness, knowing 
     that every day more people are getting sick, some seriously. 
     In the meantime, the public must be warned to avoid the food 
     of concern, creating anxiety for consumers and economic 
     losses for farmers, food processors and retailers.
       This time we're seeing this pattern play out with 
     Salmonella Enteriditis in eggs, with illnesses in 22 states 
     and more than half a billion eggs being recalled. But in 
     recent years it has been spinach, salsa, peanut butter, bean 
     sprouts, cookie dough, green onions--the list goes on and on, 
     covering many of our most common foods. Many people are left 
     wondering: heading into the second decade of the 21st 
     century, why can't we prevent and react more effectively to 
     the threat from foodborne illness?
       Sadly, the answer is simple. As President Obama said during 
     last year's peanut butter outbreak, caused by a different 
     form of Salmonella, we have a food safety regulatory system 
     designed early in the 20th century, one that must be 
     overhauled, modernized and strengthened for today.
       Under the current system, FDA is often forced to chase food 
     contaminations after they have occurred, rather than 
     protecting the public from them in the first place. 
     Difficulties in tracking the movement of food from its origin 
     to its eventual sale to the public (often far across the 
     country) can frustrate efforts to identify contaminated food. 
     The biggest surprise to most people: FDA cannot order a 
     recall of contaminated food once it is found in the 
     marketplace. Although government has a crucial role in 
     ensuring the safety of our food supply, strong regulation has 
     been missing. An overhaul of our antiquated food safety 
     system is long overdue.
       Proposed food safety legislation would give FDA better ways 
     to more quickly trace back contaminated products to the 
     source, the ability to check firms' safety records before 
     problems occur, clear authority to require firms to identify 
     and resolve food safety hazards, and resources to find 
     additional inspections and other oversight activities. 
     Pending legislation would also give the agency mandatory 
     recall authority, and other strong enforcement tools, like 
     new civil penalties and increased criminal penalties for 
     companies that fail to comply with safety requirements. In a 
     world where more and more food is imported, the legislation 
     also would strengthen FDA's ability to ensure the safety of 
     imported food.
       The good news is that a bipartisan majority in the House of 
     Representatives passed major food safety legislation last 
     year that would move the United States from a reactive food 
     safety system to one focused on preventing illness. Likewise 
     in the Senate, a bipartisan coalition has developed a strong 
     food safety bill that is ready for the Senate floor. This 
     legislation has the support of a remarkably broad coalition 
     of public health, consumer and food industry groups. We 
     commend both chambers for their hard work.
       Now it's time to finish the job. We encourage Senators to 
     support a critical and commonsense piece of public health 
     legislation. And, we urge the House and Senate to quickly 
     deliver a modern food safety bill to the President's desk. 
     It's time to break the pattern of foodborne illnesses and 
     economic loss. It's time to give FDA the modern tools and 
     resources it needs to meet the challenges of the 21st 
     century.

                                            Kathleen Sebelius,

                                   Secretary, Department of Health
                                               and Human Services.
                                        Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D.,
                                   Commissioner of Food and Drugs.

[[Page 16322]]

     
                                  ____
                                                     American Feed


                                         Industry Association,

                                 Arlington, VA, September 9, 2010.
     Hon. Tom Harkin,
     Hon. Michael B. Enzi,
     Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, 
         U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Chairman Harkin and Ranking Member Enzi: On behalf of 
     the membership of the American Feed Industry Association 
     (AFIA), I write to commend your bipartisan efforts to craft 
     well-reasoned, science-based legislation to enhance FDA's 
     regulation of U.S. food safety. AFIA wishes you to know of 
     its strong support for S. 510, the FDA Food Safety 
     Modernization Act of 2009, as reported by the Senate 
     Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP), a 
     bill we believe will provide FDA with authorities identified 
     as necessary to help prevent and, when necessary, deal with 
     food safety episodes.
       AFIA is the only national trade association representing 
     the manufacturers of livestock, poultry and pet foods. Our 
     more than 500 member companies also include feed and pet food 
     industry ingredient suppliers, the animal health industry, 
     equipment manufacturers and those firms providing goods and 
     services to the industry. In addition, AFIA membership 
     includes more than two dozen state, regional, national and 
     international trade associations representing various facets 
     of the commercial feed and pet food industries.
       Food safety is AFIA's number one priority. We strongly 
     support science-based approaches to improve the safety of 
     America's food system. Our commitment is reinforced through 
     AFIA's Safe Feed/Safe Food program, as well as through the 
     industry's third-party Feed Certification Institute (FCI), 
     efforts which help the industry consistently operate well 
     above FDA requirements. AFIA believes enhancements as 
     contained in S. 510 will help make a very good federal food 
     safety system even better.
       AFIA pledges its effort to help you to quickly pass S. 510 
     in the Senate, and will continue these efforts through 
     conference committee action with the House. AFIA looks 
     forward to working with Congress to enact this important food 
     safety legislation.
           Sincerely,
                                                   Joel G. Newman,
     President and CEO.
                                  ____



                               Consumer Federation of America,

                                Washington, DC, September 8, 2010.
     Hon. Dick Durbin,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
     Hon. Judd Gregg,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Durbin and Senator Gregg: Consumer Federation 
     of America strongly supports passage of the FDA Food Safety 
     Modernization Act (S. 510). CFA is an association of nearly 
     300 nonprofit consumer organizations that was established in 
     1968 to advance the consumer interest through research, 
     advocacy and education.
       Foodborne illness strikes tens of millions of Americans 
     each year, sends hundreds of thousands to the hospital, and 
     kills approximately 5,000 of us. The diseases are more than 
     ``just a bellyache.'' Many victims suffer long-term chronic 
     health problems including reactive arthritis, kidney failure 
     and Guillain-Barre syndrome. Children under the age of 5 are 
     the most frequent victims of foodborne illness. People over 
     age 60 are most likely to die after contracting a food-
     related illness. The economic costs are enormous. A recent 
     study estimated the annual cost of all foodborne illnesses to 
     be $152 billion.
       The suffering and heartbreak and deaths are pointless. 
     Foodborne diseases are almost entirely preventable. They 
     continue to rage because our nation's primary food safety 
     agency, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, operates under 
     the constraints of a 70-year-old law that is largely 
     extraneous to current threats to food safety. The Food, Drug 
     and Cosmetic Act does not give the FDA a specific statutory 
     mandate, appropriate program tools, adequate enforcement 
     authority or sufficient resources to stop foodborne disease 
     before it strikes us and our loved ones.
       S. 510 changes the paradigm for fighting foodborne illness, 
     directing the FDA to prevent foodborne illness rather than 
     just reacting to reports of illnesses and deaths. It requires 
     food companies to establish processing controls to avoid food 
     contamination, gives the FDA authority to set food safety 
     standards, and requires the Agency to inspect food processing 
     plants regularly to assure controls are working as intended.
       On behalf of CFA's millions of members, we thank you for 
     your strong leadership in developing S. 510 and your 
     determination to ensure its passage. We look forward to 
     continuing to work with you to get a final bill to the 
     President as soon as possible.
           Sincerely,
     Carol L. Tucker-Foreman,
       Distinguished Fellow, Food Policy Institute.
     Chris Waldrop,
       Director, Food Policy Institute.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Harkin, 
for his kind words and also for his great leadership on the HELP 
Committee. We have a big area we cover--health, education, labor, and 
pensions--and we have a lot of bills we are working on. I am pleased at 
the bipartisan way we are able to work on them, his staff and my staff. 
Actually, the members of the committee are very engaged on the issues 
we are covering, and they are very important issues for America.


                              MINE SAFETY

  Madam President, I came to the floor to talk about a little different 
issue than what we have been talking about, but it is another issue for 
the HELP Committee. This one comes under that category of labor. It is 
safety--mine safety.
  The reason I am on the floor is, I have seen some articles appearing 
in different parts of the United States that are inaccurate on what is 
happening on mine safety, and so I wish to take a moment to clear up 
some of that confusion that has been caused by a breakdown in 
bipartisan negotiations on the mine safety legislation in this last 
week.
  The terrible tragedy that occurred in West Virginia this past April 
again focused us on the strength of our Federal mine safety laws and 
regulations. My State leads the Nation in coal production. We do about 
40 percent of all the Nation's coal, and my county accounts for most of 
that. We have 92 trains a day that leave our county. That is over 1 
million tons of coal a day.
  I have always considered workplace safety as one of the most 
important missions of the HELP Committee. The first bill I did was on 
OSHA. I have been pleased to work across the aisle to improve safety, 
and that is exactly what I have tried to do this year, as well, with my 
colleagues from West Virginia and members of the committee under the 
direction of Chairman Harkin, who has been very helpful on this.
  As my colleagues well know, negotiations had been making significant 
progress until we ran into the stumbling block known as the election 
cycle. The staffs of seven Senators have been meeting several times a 
week for over 2 months, and all through the recess period. Agreements 
had been formed on over a dozen important proposals. I think there were 
14 that they were in agreement on, 7 more we were waiting for approval 
to see if there was agreement or if there were more changes needed. 
Then there were five or six that the Senators themselves had to work 
out. Several of those important ones were right on the brink of 
compromise or agreement when the talks were abruptly called off until 
after the election.
  Despite what has been said in the press and on the floor, the simple 
fact is that we might well have had an agreement right now if all the 
people were to have stayed at the table and decided this did not need 
to be an election issue. This very process of requesting unanimous 
consent on a bill, which could happen, would not even be on the bill we 
have been working on. It would be on one that was introduced before 
this process came into being. Everyone knows that would not have 
sufficient support to pass as part of political theater.
  Certainly it is not for me to consult on the political calculations 
of my colleagues, but it seems to me that political theater and failure 
to work together to get important things such as this done is exactly 
what the American people are so frustrated about this year. That is 
what all the passions are about.
  We are serving this Nation best when we work together to accomplish 
the people's business. The formula is not that complicated. Anybody can 
do it. You just have to bring both sides together for discussions, you 
have to establish agreed-upon goals and work toward agreement on those 
goals, you have to consult with stakeholders who will be affected by 
the changes being discussed--that is anybody who is going to be 
affected. Then, once substantial agreement has been reached,

[[Page 16323]]

you have to determine which issues the sides will never be able to 
agree upon and set those apart for another day's debate. That is what I 
call my 80-20 rule.
  There are some issues in every topic we talk about here that have 
already been talked about so long that both sides are already so 
polarized that if you mention one word with that particular issue, 
everybody plunges into the weeds and states the same arguments they 
have always done without listening to what the other side is saying. I 
have found you can work through those issues as well, as long as you 
can get people back up to the surface, out of the weeds, and get them 
to figure out something that allows both sides to save face. Yes, there 
is that problem around here, too. This formula has worked in the past 
for the very issue we are discussing today, which is mine safety.
  In 2006, when I was the chairman of the HELP committee, we were faced 
with a string of tragic mine accidents in West Virginia. In response to 
the first one, Senator Rockefeller and Senator Kennedy and I organized 
a trip to the Sago mine in West Virginia to meet with the miners, to 
meet with the victims' families, and to meet with the investigators. 
The three of us, along with Senators Isakson, Murray, and Byrd, then 
began negotiations. We were able to come up with an agreement in less 
than 2 months. It was called the MINER Act. It was the first major 
revision of the Mine Safety and Health Act since 1977. That has to be 
some kind of a record around here, but it was important and it was 
worked in a bipartisan way. That was done through a recess period as 
well.
  Agreements have been formed on over a dozen important proposals, as I 
mentioned. Others are very close to an agreement. I am hoping that 
people will come back to the table, work through the time until 
elections are over and get this finished.
  The MINER Act made important improvements to the emergency 
preparedness of underground mines--this one for the Sago mine--and has 
fostered tremendous improvements, particularly in communications 
technology adaptability to the underground environment. We are talking 
about being able to talk through several hundred feet, in some cases 
1000 feet of granite. If you ever try to get a cell phone to work 
through a mountain or building, you will see what kind of problem they 
have. But tremendous improvements have been made because there is a 
market for it, mining is increasing, and the safety is essential. And 
we made it a part of that Miner Act.
  One of the reasons I am so proud of the Miner Act is that we wrote it 
in the way I believe all legislation should be drafted. We brought in 
all of the stakeholders. We brought in the union, we brought in the 
nonunion people, we brought in the industry, we brought in the safety 
experts, and we brought in the investigators. The Mine Safety and 
Health Administration and all of these people sat around a table and 
worked through the biggest safety concerns and the best way to approach 
them. Because of the bipartisan nature of the bill, it sailed through a 
committee markup, it was passed by the Senate unanimously a week 
later--that is as bipartisan as you can get--and it passed the House 2 
weeks later, and there were only 37 House Members out of 435 opposing 
it. One more week later it was signed into law. That is how laws get 
done and make a difference.
  During my tenure as the chairman of the HELP committee we were able 
to move 27 bills to enactment that way. In total we reported 35 bills 
out of committee and of those 35, 25 passed the Senate. We ran out of 
time on the others or we would have gotten those, too. That is the kind 
of cooperation and accomplishment Americans are demanding, especially 
on an issue as important and timely as workplace safety. Every day, 
thousands of Americans go to work in the energy production industry. 
The work they do benefits every single one of us and underpins our 
entire economy. This year, major accidents in the energy producing 
sector have taken the lives of 29 men in West Virginia, 6 in 
Connecticut, 7 in Washington State, 3 in Texas, and 11 off the coast of 
Louisiana.
  If there were ever a time to work together to actually enact 
legislation, as opposed to playing political theater, this should be 
it.
  It can be done. There is progress being made. My staff has not walked 
away from the table and I resent any articles that say that. I am 
impressed and in agreement with the agreements that have been made so 
far. I keep constant track of those. It should not take very long to 
finish the six or seven that are very close to being resolved and then 
it should not take very long for the Members to sit down and resolve 
the ones that are left after that.
  We can have a mine safety bill. We cannot have it this week. I am 
sure we cannot have it next week. The House has already done a mine 
safety bill so we have to conference that. It is going to take a little 
bit of time, although for the bill we are working on, I think, and in a 
bipartisan way, it could be done unanimously on this side. The Senate 
would then do it unanimously, and it is very likely for the House to 
follow very closely--follow suit and finish it up very well. I think 
that is what the American people expect.
  Articles about things falling apart are not nearly as useful as 
keeping people together.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning 
business for up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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