A brand new bill has just been introduced in the Senate. It’s supposed to hold accountable those who taint our food supply on purpose. But as drafted, it actually gives license to the FDA to target supplement and natural health product companies.

This new bill is on top of the House and Senate Food Safety bills that we have been updating you about for some time. Please keep in mind the truth about all these bills: there are already laws on the books to ensure the safety of our food; all we need is for those laws to be properly enforced. Instead, for the past two years, lawmakers have been trying to “beef up” current rules. The main vehicle for this effort has been something called the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, or FSEA.

* The House version of this bill, H.R. 2749, passed at the end of July 2009. ANH-USA has especially opposed that bill. It is a travesty. It would not only impose draconian new penalties, including long jail terms, on both food and supplement producers who even inadvertently fail to follow FDA bookkeeping rules to the letter, a provision clearly intended for use in intimidating small producers. It also places undue economic hardship on small and mid-sized farms and food facilities (both organic and conventional), which could easily drive many of them out of business and lead to monopoly control of food by large corporations.  * The Senate version of that bill, S. 510, introduced in March 2009, was passed out of committee, but an agreement has not been reached to bring it to the floor of the Senate for a vote. See our article “True Food Safety” in this issue for more information on how you can help.