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FTCLDF opposed passage of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) from the outset because of numerous provisions that pose a threat to family farms and small food producers. The Tester-Hagan amendment offers some respite but FDA is working hard to undermine it.
Instead of reining in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and making it accountable for its failure to exercise the powers it already possessed, FSMA surrendered even more power to FDA, putting food security at risk by further centralizing the food system. Increasing local food sources and reversing the tide of food imports is exactly what FSMA fails to do.
Instead of focusing on the real sources of food safety problems in the industrialized, interstate and international food system, FDA has been given power to micro-manage small operations and even to usurp states’ powers to regulate food.
[Congress passed FSMA on Dec. 21, 2010 – It’s unclear how many senators were actually in DC to vote on that Sunday evening]Action Alerts:
TESTER-HAGAN EXEMPTION IN JEOPARDY
The Food Safety Modernization Act’s (FSMA’s) extensive new requirements for food producers favor large-scale industrial producers over small-scale sustainable producers. Senator Tester of Montana fought for an amendment, co-sponsored by Senator Hagan of North Carolina, to exempt small-scale local food producers from the most burdensome portions of the bill, namely the regulations governing on-farm growing of produce and the hazard analysis plans for “facilities,” which would include anyone doing any processing.
Under the Tester-Hagan amendment, producers who gross under half a million dollars (adjusted for inflation) and who sell more than half their products directly to individual consumers or to local retailers and restaurants are to be exempt from these new federal regulations.
The Tester-Hagan amendment is vital for protecting vulnerable, small-scale businesses that are providing safe, healthy food for their local communities.
At the urging of FDA and some special interest groups, FSMA included a provision that allows the FDA to withdraw the exemption from farms or facilities under specific conditions. FDA’s proposed rules to implement this provision undermine the intent of the Tester-Hagan amendment and abuse normal concepts of due process.
- FDA Threat to Tester Hagan Exemption
FTCLDF, as part of a coalition of 39 farming and consumer organizations, urged Congress to include a provision in the Farm Bill that would require the FDA to do more analysis before enforcing rules under FSMA. Read the letter at bit.ly/farm-bill-benishek.
FDA EFFORTS TO IMPLEMENT FSMA
FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)
- The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the most sweeping reform of our food safety laws in more than 70 years, was signed into law by President Obama on January 4, 2011. It aims to ensure the U.S. food supply is safe by shifting the focus from responding to contamination to preventing it. [Visit FDA’s website, more links on FSMA]
Food Safety Modernization Act: Putting the Focus on Prevention
By Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., Commissioner of Food and Drugs
Lawsuit Filed by CFS to Push Implementation
Judge Issues Injunction to Block FDA from Extending FSMA Deadlines Again
By Linda Larsen | posted by Food Safety Magazine August 19, 2013
- Federal Judge Phyllis Hamilton has sided with the Center for Food Safety again; on August 13 she issued an order telling the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that there can be no more extensions of rules in the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). The rules should have been completed last July, but there have been delays at the Office of Management and Budget, and the FDA has extended comment periods several times. [Read more]
Putting the Food Safety back in the “Food Safety Modernization Act”
By George Kimbrell, Senior Attorney | May 8th, 2013 – Center for Food Safety
- In the last few years, it seems like almost every week there is a new foodborne illness outbreak making headlines. Listeria in imported cheese and cantaloupe. Salmonella in peanut butter, imported papayas, dog food, and mangoes. E. coli in lettuce and spinach. And those are just some of the major outbreaks in the past two years.
In fact, foodborne illness is an ongoing epidemic that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates affects 48 million people – 1 in every 6 Americans – annually. Over 128,000 are hospitalized every year and 3,000 tragically die. Those that recover often suffer severe long‑term effects, such as kidney failure, chronic arthritis, and brain and nerve damage. The annual costs to the U.S. economy in medical bills and productivity losses alone is over $77 billion.
This foodborne illness crisis is an avoidable and foreseeable symptom of our broken industrial food system, and one major reason that Center for Food Safety’s (CFS) fundamental mission is to protect human health and the environment by curbing harmful food production technologies, and promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture instead. [Read more]
Unfortunately, the FSMA net—meant for the industrial food system—has entangled the local food system as well.
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