What you should know about the FDA Food Safety and Modernization Act (S510)

With this bill just having passed the Senate, but running into a technical challenge by House Democrats there is something every American should be aware in terms of how Congress operates.  There is no reason to delve into the specifics here because plenty of reputable organizations have already done the work.  One excellent resource that illustrates the danger of granting the FDA more power and some of the specifics of the Senate bill can be found at the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund.  


I want to just briefly touch upon the typical Congressional bait and switch tactic that has allowed so many damaging pieces of legislation to control aspects of our lives under the pretext of safety or 'common good'.  


For starters, the name of the bill is designed as a marketing ploy.  Anyone who now opposes this bill will at the surface be opposing safety and why would any rational individual oppose safety?  Modernization is also a wonderful keyword and this is how the Bush administration expanded Medicare through the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 - an additional 15+ Trillion dollar liability and upfront costs far greater than originally projected.  


At the heart of the debate is granting the FDA additional powers to regulate and control food in the name of safety, which is akin to appointing Wikileaks to manage secret Government communications.  A recent example of the egg boondoggle is a perfect example:

The push to pass S510 is currently being driven by an outbreak of foodborne illness sickening over 1,500 people that has been linked to salmonella-tainted eggs produced by Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, two of the ten largest egg producers in the country. What the mainstream media is ignoring in covering the story is that FDA’s current powers to regulate food were more than enough to put a stop to the problems caused by the egg producers.

FDA already has jurisdiction over shell eggs and has the power to inspect the farms of egg producers if they are engaging in interstate commerce [21 USC 374(a)]. With Wright County Egg’s history of food safety and other violations, they should have been inspected a long time ago; but FDA did not set foot on the farm until after the outbreak was well underway. If FDA had conducted a timely inspection of Wright County Egg and observed the conditions now reported in the media, the agency could have detained any product found on the premises without a court order [21 USC 334(h)].

But proponents of S510 would cite this failure and other examples of Americans getting sick through contaminated food as a rallying cry that we need more enforcement.  This is despite the fact that existing enforcement is failing!  FDA's failure with drugs is even more profound and has been responsible for thousands of deaths from FDA approved products while possibly killing hundreds of thousands of more by preventing life savings products from entering the product.


But far more importantly and what you really should know about this bill is the list of supporters.  By and large this bill will impose significant costs for regulation and compliance as food processors will now have more clerical responsibility and bureaucratic costs.   One would then naturally assume that a bill imposing more regulation would be opposed by the subjects upon which this regulation will be imposed upon, but one would be wrong. 

Support

Oppose

American Bakers Association American Beverage Association American Farm Bureau Federation American Frozen Food Institute American Public Health Association American Veterinary Medical Association Center for Foodborne Illness Research and Prevention Center for Science in the Public Interest Consumer Federation of America Consumers Union Food Marketing Institute General Mills Grocery Manufacturers Association International Bottled Water Association International Dairy Foods Association International Foodservice Distributors Association Kraft Foods North America National Association of Manufacturers National Coffee Association National Confectioners Association National Consumers League National Fisheries Institute National Restaurant Association Pew Charitable Trust Safe Tables Our Priority (STOP) Snack Food Association Trust for America's Health U.S. Chamber of Commerce United Fresh Produce Association

American Grassfed Association Campaign for Liberty Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Farm Family Defenders Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund John Birch Society National Family Farm Coalition National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association Produce Marketing Association Raw Milk Association of Colorado Small Farms Conservancy The Heritage Foundation Weston A. Price Foundation

What else do you need to know?  Every single national organization involved in food distribution/production along with some of the biggest corporations in America like Kraft and GM support a bill that invariably increase costs through additional regulation.  Yet on the flip side a coalition of small farmers and distributors facing a very large and well funded force are opposing it.  Why?  Are these small farmers and distributors not interested in safety or modernizing their production facilities?  


Of course they are because if any distributor of food regardless of size (in theory) continually distributes bad food then they would be out of business, especially the smaller farmer that does not have the size and money to cope with such a mistake - unlike the aforementioned Wright County farm.  


The reason for opposition to this bill should also dispel the notion that big businesses in general are anti-regulation and love the free market, because as you can see Big Business support for this awful bill is undeniable.  Big businesses have traditionally used the big hand of Government to bludgeon the competition and solidify control of the market through the power of regulation.  As a point of fact the Glass-Steagall Act passed in the midst of the New Deal was a piece of legislation that was to supposedly regulate and cripple big commercial banks and yet it was the Rockefeller banking interests that lobbied, agitated and ultimately pushed the bill through in order to snuff out their main competitor - JP Morgan.  


As the legal defense fund states:

S510 is not about protecting the public health but rather about increasing federal control over food and transferring market share from the local food system to the industrial food system.  The bill grants broad rulemaking power to FDA, a grant not merited by the agency’s track record.  Its passage will cripple local food over time. 

Big business armed with the power of Big Government in the name of "safety" and the "public good" once again strives to centralize power and limit our choice.