What the New Food Safety Bill Could Mean for You
President Obama will sign into law today a new food safety bill that significantly increases the ability of the Food and Drug Administration to proactively police the nation's food supply. Coming on the heels of a new Center for Disease Control and Prevention report that says food-borne illnesses afflict 1 in 6 Americans every year, send 128,000 of us to the hospital, and are the cause of 3,000 deaths, that comes as some good news.
The new bill will provide significant upgrades to the oversight of vegetables, produce, and other foods, excluding meat and poultry which are already under the watch of the Department of Agriculture. The main provisions of the new bill:
- The FDA can order recalls of tainted food. Before the bill, the FDA could only ask businesses to voluntarily recall tainted food.
- Increase inspections of food production sites. The riskiest factories and producers would be put on a 3-year inspection cycle. Food safety expert Erik Olson says the current inspection cycle is more than 10 years.
- Inspection of imported food. The FDA will have the ability to block food from foreign sources that does not meet U.S. safety standards. According to the FDA, 15 percent of the U.S. food supply is foreign-based, including half of our fresh fruits and 80 percent of our seafood.
- Require grocery stores to prominently post recall info.
- Require farms and processors to keep written records of food safety procedures.
One More Congressional Hurdle
But before the FDA can ramp up its food oversight, it will have to wait to see if Congress moves to fund the new bill. As part of Republican agenda to scale back federal spending, the Republican in line to take control of the House subcommittee that oversees the FDA is angling to withhold full funding of the food safety bill. "There's a high possibility of trimming this whole package back," Georgia representative Jack Kingston told Bloomberg News.
The CBO estimates that the FDA will need $1.4 billion over the next five years so it can staff up to inspect food production facilities and oversee better food-safety systems. A March 2010 report from Pew Trusts that estimated the annual health-related cost of food-borne illnesses -- including medical and insurance costs, as well as lost work time -- to be more than $150 billion. An important caveat is that the Pew report was based on earlier CDC data that cited a higher incidence of food-borne illness (76 million cases a year v. 48 million in the new report.) But even if we were to halve the Pew cost estimate, we're still talking about a price tag of more than $75 billion to cover the health-related costs associated with food-borne illness.
What You Can Do
The expectation is that the FDA will eventually get the full funding to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act. But even with the stepped-up oversight, consumers still can play a big role in minimizing their exposure to food-borne illness. Some tips from the Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention:
- Be especially circumspect of higher risk foods. This includes raw unpasteurized milk and juice, raw eggs, raw meat, poultry, fish and raw produce. "When in doubt, throw it out," advises the Center.
- Put raw fish, poultry, and meat in a plastic bag at the checkout counter. (Assuming your store offers plastic bags.) The plastic helps prevent the spread of food-borne bacteria and pathogens.
- Pay attention to the use-by date. The "Best if Used By Date" is simply a note of when the taste/flavor of a food product might start to drop. What matters from a safety standpoint is the "Use By Date." That is the manufacturer's recommendation on the last "safe" date to consume the food.
- Patrol your refrigerator. Following guidelines from the Department of Agriculture, the Center for Foodborne Illness recommends the following rules for tossing out unused food:
- Milk and juice that is seven days past its expiration date.
- Deli meat sliced at the store, after one week.
- Unopened lunch meat that has been sitting in the fridge for two weeks. (Opened lunch meat should get the boot after two-five days.)