House subcommittee hearing on industry role in food safety

Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing -- Contaminated Food; Private Sector Accountability,(Feb 26, 2008) From the Statement of The Honorable Bart Stupak:

Our food safety system is broken. So-called voluntary compliance—relying on the food industry to place safety before profits—does not appear to be working. The budgets and regulatory policies of this Administration have crippled both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). In fact, some 76 million Americans – 1 out of every 4 - are affected each year by illness from contaminated food.

Since sickness from contaminated food is largely preventable, this Committee has actively pushed the public and private sectors to focus on preventing this epidemic. What have we learned so far? We have found a fragmented food safety system suffering from woefully inadequate resources, inconsistent oversight, and ineffective coordination. In December the FDA’s own Science Board report noted that FDA’s food safety program has put American lives at risk and the FDA “does not have the capacity to ensure the safety of food for the nation.”

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