Today, the House will take up the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act after the Senate rejected the cromnibus spending measure, to which the FDA bill had previously been attached. The legislation was amended onto a House-passed bill and adopted by the Senate Sunday night. ATR's Center for Fiscal Accountability urged members of the House of Representatives to vote against the bill, citing its growing price tag and expansive regulatory overreach. From CFA's alert:
The FDA and USDA currently have overlapping responsibilities, resulting in inefficient and ineffective food safety oversight. This confusion was at the core of the recent egg salmonella scare, which could have easily been avoided had the egg oversight responsibilities of the FDA and USDA been clearly delineated.
Rather than address and streamline these duplicities, the Food Modernization Act shovels taxpayer dollars at the problem while misdiagnosing the issue at hand; the bill grants the FDA broad authority to recall foods without any oversight. As was witnessed by the agency’s mistaken recall of tomatoes that cost the food industry over $100 million in losses, this represents a potentially disastrous and completely unnecessary overstep in federal regulatory policy.
Click here to read the entire alert.