The best fiction writer in the world couldn’t create a better example of government stupidity than what Congress has done this week to gut efforts to make America’s food supply safer.
You have to wonder whether GOP lawmakers believe that they and their loved ones are somehow immune to E. coli, salmonella, listeria and all the other food pathogens that cause debilitating illness and death.
Don't worry. The Republicans say these are fine, just fine.
For almost two years Congress debated ways to revamp major shortcomings in the nation’s food safety operation and give the FDA and USDA the tools, regulations and personnel to finally do the job properly. The battle was long and ugly, with lobbyists from corporate agribusinesses pulling out all stops, but on Jan. 4, President Obama signed the major Food Safety and Modernization Act into law. It was the first retooling of food safety regs since 1938.
But a law means nothing if there aren’t funds appropriated to enable the new requirements. If the House gets its way, the new law will be dead on arrival.
Kentucky Republican Hal Rogers, who chairs the House Agriculture Appropriations committee, calls the cuts “unnecessary and fiscally responsible.” He and other Republicans insist that America’s food supply is 99.9 percent safe.
Clearly they have not seen the food poisoning body count from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its newest tally says that more than 50 million people in the U.S. each year are sickened from encountering pathogens in their food. Nearly 30,000 are hospitalized running up medicals of tens of thousands of dollars. About 3,000 die. And these are just the sicknesses of which we’re aware.
The proposed cuts of $87 million will prevent FDA from meeting its safety obligations under the new law. The $35 million cut in USDA’s funding will force the agency to lay off many inspectors at meat and poultry processing plants, let alone hire the additional inspectors the law calls for.
The only hope for sanity is that the House plan must go to the Democratic controlled Senate for its input and approval.
–The Food Watchdog Staff
