House Passes Sweeping Food Safety Bill

[JohnnyGage]

Thank God, I feel so much safer now!

 

[JD50]

Originally posted by: SammyJr

Originally posted by: spidey07
We shall control every aspect of your lives. And you dummies will cheer it.

Like I said, only a Republican would bitch about measures to increase food safety.

You sound like a neocon.

 

[Siddhartha]

Originally posted by: OCguy
FDA is a joke.

During the Reagan era, 1980 to the present, the Federal government was considered to be at best a hinderance to the private sector. Almost all oversight responsibilities and capabilities were in one way or another curtailed.

Of course, curtailing inspection of food quality and safety is okay until there is a problem.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: MIKEMIKE
i hope someone within the food industry will actually come and say what this will do. would be nice to see...

Prices go up.

You understand corporate America I see.

You are allowed to skip the orientation.

It has nothing to do with understanding "corporate America," just basic economics.

Some people here act as if corporations and smaller businesses otherwise have no incentive to make sure their products are safe. And it's simply ignorant. What they don't realize is that these kinds of regulations hurt smaller farms and smaller business which cannot afford to abide by the new regulations, making the big corporations they fear even bigger and more powerful as their smaller competition goes bankrupt. It's expensive to prove your innocence when you are assumed to be guilty, and that's what most regulations inherently are.

this post is pretty much bullshit, fud fud fud

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: IGBT
does this include origin labeling??

i believe thats already legally required for produce

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: MIKEMIKE
i hope someone within the food industry will actually come and say what this will do. would be nice to see...

Prices go up.

You understand corporate America I see.

You are allowed to skip the orientation.

It has nothing to do with understanding "corporate America," just basic economics.

Some people here act as if corporations and smaller businesses otherwise have no incentive to make sure their products are safe. And it's simply ignorant. What they don't realize is that these kinds of regulations hurt smaller farms and smaller business which cannot afford to abide by the new regulations, making the big corporations they fear even bigger and more powerful as their smaller competition goes bankrupt. It's expensive to prove your innocence when you are assumed to be guilty, and that's what most regulations inherently are.

this post is pretty much bullshit, fud fud fud

You could at least explain why. 😉

 

[ilkhan]

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: MIKEMIKE
i hope someone within the food industry will actually come and say what this will do. would be nice to see...

Prices go up.

You understand corporate America I see.
You are allowed to skip the orientation.

It has nothing to do with understanding "corporate America," just basic economics.
Some people here act as if corporations and smaller businesses otherwise have no incentive to make sure their products are safe. And it's simply ignorant. What they don't realize is that these kinds of regulations hurt smaller farms and smaller business which cannot afford to abide by the new regulations, making the big corporations they fear even bigger and more powerful as their smaller competition goes bankrupt. It's expensive to prove your innocence when you are assumed to be guilty, and that's what most regulations inherently are.

this post is pretty much bullshit, fud fud fud

You could at least explain why. 😉

If he could, he would.

 

[JSt0rm]

Originally posted by: JD50

Originally posted by: SammyJr

Originally posted by: spidey07
We shall control every aspect of your lives. And you dummies will cheer it.

Like I said, only a Republican would bitch about measures to increase food safety.

You sound like a neocon.

and you are a neocon

 

[Siddhartha]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

The measure would require the Food and Drug Administration to conduct inspections every 6 to 12 months at food processing plants that it deems high-risk.

And other plants once every 3 years?!

That's a serious WTF right there. So, locally, our county health department inspects EVERY restaurant at least annually. I've chatted with the inspector several times "I can always find violations." And, he does. He always finds things at every restaurant that the restaurants are required to fix. Most of the fixes are fairly simple - little things like leaving an ice scoop in an ice maker where ice might contact the handle where people touch it. Restaurants get cited for things like thermometers in refrigerators being 2 degrees off. Cited for not heating food up rapidly enough, else not cooling food down quickly enough. These are just little restaurant that have the potential of infecting a few hundred people.

The plants the FDA inspects have the ability to infect MILLIONS of people, yet the inspections are only every few years?! WTF?!!

There are materials, for example Citric Acid and salt, that because of their chemistry, are considered not to be high risk.

What can grow on salt? There is not much that can grow on dry Citric Acid.

 

[Siddhartha]

This thread has an interesting dichotomy of responses:

1. This is a serious issue. The Federal government needs to step to ensure safety of the country's food chain.

2. There is no problem.

I have seen a similar dichotomy in the health care threads.

 

[JD50]

Originally posted by: JSt0rm01

Originally posted by: JD50

Originally posted by: SammyJr

Originally posted by: spidey07
We shall control every aspect of your lives. And you dummies will cheer it.

Like I said, only a Republican would bitch about measures to increase food safety.

You sound like a neocon.

and you are a neocon

Nope.

 

[1prophet]

"We want clean air, clear water, clean food, good living conditions, the best health care in the world--yet we aren't willing to pay for anything manufactured under those restrictions."

 

[WHAMPOM]

Originally posted by: Phokus
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07...politics/31fda.html?hp

Good. Reading this article, i cannot believe the FDA had so little power over our food safety. Given the scandal of that peanut factory that caused deaths and so much sickness (among other cases), this bill is way past due.

In a major step toward an overhaul of the nation?s food safety system, the House of Representatives passed legislation on Thursday to require more frequent inspections of processing plants and give the government the authority to order the recall of tainted foods.

?No legislation like this has moved forward this far in decades to overhaul the food safety laws,? said Erik D. Olson, director of food and consumer product safety issues at the Pew Charitable Trusts. ?It?s a pretty historic moment.?

House passage sets the stage for the Senate to take up the issue, though probably not until the fall. The Obama administration has voiced strong support for a comprehensive food safety revamping.

The bill passed the House on a vote of 283 to 142. Democratic support was overwhelming, but Republicans were split, with 54 voting in favor and 122 against. Much of the opposition centered on lesser provisions that critics said would add burdensome bureaucracy for farmers.

The legislation seeks to remedy problems in the food safety system that have been discussed for decades. Its chief sponsor, Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, said it would ?fundamentally change the way in which we ensure the safety of our food supply.?

The measure would require the Food and Drug Administration to conduct inspections every 6 to 12 months at food processing plants that it deems high-risk. These could include plants that have experienced food safety problems in the past or that handle products that spoil easily, like seafood.

Lower-risk processing plants would be inspected at least once every three years, and warehouses for packaged foods at least once every five. Backers of the legislation have complained that at present, some facilities go a decade or longer between F.D.A. inspections.

To help finance the inspections, the bill would impose a yearly fee of $500 to be paid by food processing plants, with a $175,000 cap for large companies with multiple plants. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the fee would generate $1.4 billion over the next five years, covering about 40 percent of the F.D.A.?s costs in carrying out the expanded inspections and other requirements in the bill.

The measure would also give the agency the power to order recalls of tainted food. Under its current authority, it can only ask companies to recall their food products.

Among the bill?s other provisions are heightened inspection requirements on imported foods, a mandate that records of processing plants be made available to inspectors and investigators, and a requirement that processing plants develop elaborate safety plans meant to head off problems before they arise.

In addition, the bill would direct the F.D.A. to create a system that would better trace food products and ingredients, as a way of quickly getting to the source of future outbreaks of food-borne illness.

?Over all, the legislation will raise the bar for the entire food industry and provide powerful disincentives? to bad actors, said Scott Faber, vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a trade group representing food processors, which supported the bill.

The legislation applies only to the F.D.A. and so would not cover meat or poultry products, which are overseen by the Department of Agriculture and have long been regulated more tightly than other foods. Advocates said the F.D.A. regulated about 80 percent of the food Americans eat.

Carol L. Tucker-Foreman, a food safety advocate at the Consumer Federation of America, said the House vote was ?a major step forward.?

?The F.D.A. has no specific authority right now, or responsibility, to prevent food-borne illness,? Ms. Tucker-Foreman said. ?This legislation tells them to prevent food-borne illness, and it sets up the elements that are necessary to do that.?

All I see are price breaks for the big shots that are the cause of most food contamination. Legislation had a few lobbyists in the formulation??

 

[SammyJr]

Originally posted by: JD50

Originally posted by: SammyJr

Originally posted by: spidey07
We shall control every aspect of your lives. And you dummies will cheer it.

Like I said, only a Republican would bitch about measures to increase food safety.

You sound like a neocon.

You got a platform of tax cuts for the wealthy and Israel as the top priority out of that how?

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: SammyJr
Somehow I think the Republicans in this thread supported the right of the Chinese to poison our dogs since, after all, its business and only evil socialists oppose business.

Did you see this part?

"The legislation applies only to the F.D.A. and so would not cover meat or poultry products, which are overseen by the Department of Agriculture and have long been regulated more tightly than other foods. Advocates said the F.D.A. regulated about 80 percent of the food Americans eat. "

Yet when a company wanted to test all its meat for mad cow they were blocked from doing so...

Like they really care about what you eat.

And who was behind their being blocked from testing? *The big businesses who don't want the good tested* and had such influence in the Bush administration.

It's a little like that law that Oprah Winfrey ran into earlier barring people from *saying* things that might hurt the sale of meat - less wealthy people can't pay lawyers a lot.

But the right has no apparent worries about big business.

 

[JD50]

Originally posted by: SammyJr

Originally posted by: JD50

Originally posted by: SammyJr

Originally posted by: spidey07
We shall control every aspect of your lives. And you dummies will cheer it.

Like I said, only a Republican would bitch about measures to increase food safety.

You sound like a neocon.

You got a platform of tax cuts for the wealthy and Israel as the top priority out of that how?

I said that you sound like a neocon, not that you are a neocon. Your argument is no different than those that argued for the patriot act.

"Only a Democrat would bitch about measures to protect the country."