In her first outing before Congress as a commissioner and not a nominee, Margaret Hamburg, the newly-installed head of the Food and Drug Administration, told the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health that a safety overhaul sponsored by several leading Democrats was “a major step in the right direction,” but that her agency would need more money to carry it out. (The New York Times)

"A coalition of consumer groups is fighting for improvements in the food safety system so that more families do not have to suffer tragic consequences from foodborne disease. I am impressed that major sectors in the food industry also support and are advocating for fundamental change," Hamburg testified.

Consumers Union praised the committee and urged Congress to include mandatory testing and reporting of contamination in the comprehensive food safety bill. “Consumers Union applauds the leadership of the Committee for taking action to finally reform our broken food safety system,” said Jean Halloran, Director of Food Policy Initiatives for CU. “This is a much needed step to protect the safety of our nation’s food supply."

CU has long advocated for many of the important new provisions in this draft bill, including:

• Providing FDA with mandatory recall authority, which the agency currently lacks;
• Requiring high risk facilities to be inspected at least every 6-18 months (currently facilities are inspected once a decade on average);
• Requiring electronic traceability systems that are able to track identified contaminated food back to its source; and
• Requiring all food producers, foreign as well as domestic, to register with FDA and pay a $1,000 registration fee, a modest and necessary source of revenue to bolster food safety oversight.

At the session, a bipartisanship consensus evident in earlier hearings began to fray on issues such as registration fees and recall authority, according to the New York Times.

"For consumers, food safety is not a partisan issue,” Halloran said. “The Food Safety Enhancement Act discussion draft provides smart, long-overdue solutions to our food safety crisis, and it should be supported by members of Congress from both parties. We urge both parties to unite to address the problem before there is another outbreak that causes more sickness and deaths."