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The House will vote today on a momentous, controversial plan to overhaul a large swath of the nation’s food-safety system.
The vote comes amid yet another round of recalls. On Tuesday, the FDA announced the voluntary recall of “one lot� of salmonella-tainted cilantro, distributed by a company called Frontera Produce.
The agency did not define how much cilantro makes up a lot, but it must be, well, a lot, because “the lot in question, 118122, was distributed to two retail store chains in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Louisiana, and New Mexico,� the press release states.
Yet again, the sieve-like nature of our food-safety system comes into relief. According to the FDA:
This product originated in Mexico and was procured by Frontera Produce, who [sic] subsequently routinely tested for contaminants as part of their internal food safety program.
So if the cilantro underwent “routine testing� and showed up with salmonella, why did it go out to two (unnamed) grocery chains with operations in five states? Evidently, the tests got done after the stuff went out to potentially thousands of consumers. Nice one! Just a week before, another Texas company issued a voluntary recall on another (pardon the expression) shitload of salmonella-infected cilantro; and California produce giant Tanimura & Antle recalled 22,000 cases of salmonella-tainted lettuce that had already gone out to 29 states.
It is against this backdrop that the House is debating a major overhaul of the U.S. food-safety landscape, or at least the part of it that doesn’t include meat. The bill, H.R. 2749, or The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, would transform the role of the FDA, which oversees food safety of all foods except for meat and eggs, which fall under the (rather timid) purview of the USDA.
On Wednesday, the bill narrowly failed in an attempt by its sponsors to pass it in a special vote that would have required a two-thirds majority in exchange for not having to consider amendments. The tally was 280-150—six votes shy of the necessary margin. Small-farm and sustainable-ag advocates generally opposed the bill, arguing it would place disproportionately heavy burdens on community-scale players within the food system.
