[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 1841-1842]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         SAFE FOOD ACT OF 2015

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the issue that 
impacts the lives of every American--food safety.
  In 1997, I introduced a bill to consolidate at one agency the Federal 
oversight of food safety, and I have introduced that bill seven times, 
including most recently just last week. So I found it heartening to see 
the President's proposal to consolidate most of those responsibilities 
into one agency as part of the fiscal year 2016 budget.
  Today, 15 different Federal agencies have food safety 
responsibilities. This patchwork of oversight makes it harder to focus 
on the highest risks in our food system and makes foodborne illness 
outbreaks more difficult to manage. President Obama's budget puts in 
motion a plan to create the efficiencies we have been talking about 
since 1997.
  The President's plan would create a single new agency within the 
Department of Health and Human Services.

[[Page 1842]]

That agency would have primary responsibility for food safety 
inspections, as well as enforcement, applied research, and outbreak 
response and mitigation. And the proposed agency would be the Federal 
point for coordinating with State and local entities and food safety 
stakeholders. This is an important step toward creating a single food 
agency.
  I first got involved in updating our food safety system in response 
to a letter from constituent. The letter shared the story of a mother 
purchasing, cooking, and serving her 6-year-old son a hamburger. Very 
few foods are more basic in America than hamburger, but on this day 
that hamburger was contaminated with E. coli. This simple hamburger 
ended up taking her son's life. This story, as sad as it is, is only 
one of many. Each year, 48 million Americans become sick as a result of 
foodborne illnesses. That is one in every six people. Mr. President, 
128,000 of those will be so sick they will need hospitalization, and 
3,000 of those will not survive their illnesses.
  While we have made significant reforms to our food safety system with 
passage of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act--which will improve 
our food safety--we have still not solved this problem.
  Recently, the New Yorker ran an article called ``A Bug in the 
System.'' The story details the experience of Rick Schiller, who had 
contracted a form of the salmonella bacterium, known as Salmonella 
Heidelberg. The condition led to multiple days in the hospital. After 
his release, he was contacted by the Centers for Disease Control, and 
the U.S. Department of Agriculture collected some chicken from his 
freezer as a potential source for the foodborne illness. More than a 
year later, he had not heard back from the investigator and he still 
wasn't sure that it was the chicken that almost killed him.
  This New Yorker article highlights problems that have been identified 
by the Government Accountability Office, the National Research Council, 
and the Institute of Medicine for decades. Simply determining which of 
15 Federal agencies is responsible for inspection of a particular food 
can leave the average citizen scratching their head.
  In the current regulatory regime, a pepperoni pizza--because it 
contains meat--has ingredients that will be inspected three times 
before the product hits the grocery store freezer. A vegetarian pizza 
produced at the same facility, however, will probably not undergo any 
inspection.
  For eggs, it is even more scrambled. If it is a fresh egg, it is 
inspected by U.S. Department of Agriculture. But if that egg is part of 
premade product like a breakfast biscuit, it is the Food and Drug 
Administration. It just does not make sense. The experts said it, the 
data reflects it, and we can be left with only one conclusion.
  The fragmented nature of our food safety system has left us more 
vulnerable to risk of foodborne illness and too often forced consumers 
to go it alone in the case of outbreak. I agree with the President that 
it is time for a new governmentwide approach. I would like to take it a 
step further and establish a single food safety agency.
  The Safe Food Act I introduced last week would transfer and 
consolidate food safety authorities for inspections, enforcement, 
labeling, and research into a single food safety agency. That will 
allow us to prioritize system-wide food safety goals and targets. With 
a single food safety agency, food producers and manufacturers will just 
have a single Federal regulatory structure.
  An egg is an egg is an egg and will be regulated by the same agency 
regardless of how you cook, process, or serve it. This should make it 
easier for those in the food industry to comply with food safety laws, 
even if those laws are no less stringent. The bill also modernizes 
certain aspects of our federal food safety laws to protect and improve 
public health.
  Specifically, the bill would authorize mandatory recall for all 
foods. Today, it is easier to recall toys than tainted meat. The bill 
requires facilities to use risk-based analysis to identify and protect 
against potential hazards at their facility. The bill will authorize 
performance standards for pathogens like salmonella and campylobacter 
and for the first time authorize the agency to prevent products that 
are not meeting those standards from entering the market. The bill will 
provide for full trace-back of foods to better identify and stop the 
outbreak at its source. Finally, the bill provides a single point of 
contact for families harmed by foodborne illness to turn to for 
answers.
  This new agency will help those families navigate the differing 
Federal, State, and local food safety agencies to get the answers they 
deserve. It is bad enough to suffer severe illness or lose a loved one 
to foodborne illness; you should not have to spend months going from 
agency to agency trying to get as simple an answer to a question like, 
Did this chicken make me sick?
  This is not the only approach to creating an agency with the primary 
responsibilities for overseeing and directing food safety, but we think 
it will help close existing gaps in our food safety system, reduce the 
likelihood of foodborne illness, clarify our inspection regimes for 
industry, and provide more clear assistance to people made sick by 
foodborne illness.
  In closing, I want to take a moment to thank some of my colleagues. I 
would like to thank Senators Feinstein, Blumenthal, and Gillibrand for 
joining me in introducing this bill, and I stand ready to work with any 
Member on either side of the aisle who wants to tackle this issue.
  I commend the administration for embracing this idea of consolidating 
oversight of food safety. I hope it doesn't take another serious 
foodborne outbreak before we decide to act.

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