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Groups oppose parts of food safety bill

The National Pork Producers Council is among the groups with serious concerns about the food safety reform legislation approved last week (June 10th) by a House subcommittee. The NPPC says among its concerns is the authority for the Food and Drug Administration to “conduct on-farm inspections, to quarantine geographic areas over food safety problems and to create a ‘farm to fork’ tracing system for food.”NPPC says the Food Safety and Enhancement Act of 2009 would also allow the FDA to write safety standards for on-farm animal control, manure use and employee hygiene. And if those guidelines weren’t followed, NPPC the legislation would require food from those farms to be “adulterated”.

NPPC director of science and technology, Jen Greiner says the legislation would duplicate efforts and give broad authority to the FDA over on-farm issues, “When we think through FDA and their oversight of our licensed feed mills and our animal health products, they obviously have expertise in those areas. But, when we start talking about making a pig and keeping that pig healthy throughout the course of its life and getting it through production, that’s not their strong suit. That’s the strong suit of other agencies that we’ve worked with for over a hundred years.”

NPPC president Don Butler says that producing safe pork is the number one priority of pork producers, but this bill is, in his words “a recipe for disaster for America’s food animal farmers and – ultimately – for America’s consumers.”

In addition, the American Meat Institute (AMI) has expressed concerns about how the bill would allow the government to control companies’ hazard programs and that the meat and poultry industries are already regulated intensely by the USDA.

National Pork Producers Council

American Meat Institute

AUDIO: Jen Greiner, NPPC, director of science and technology, (5 min., MP3)