Opening Statement of Senator Tom Harkin

Hearing on How Should our Food Safety System Address Microbial Contamination?

9/20/2000

Thank you Mr. Chairman. Everyone in the food chain - from the farm on through to the table - has a vital stake in our country's food safety and inspection system. The linchpin is consumer confidence. Our food safety system must adequately protect consumers, and it must assure them that their food is safe. If consumers lack confidence in the safety of the food in restaurants and store shelves, they will not be good customers. And that means less demand and lower prices and income for livestock and poultry producers, as well as for packers and processors.

I commend the Chairman for his interest in food safety and for calling this hearing to examine how well our food safety system is addressing microbiological threats. I, too, have had a long-standing interest in food safety. I have introduced several pieces of legislation this Congress to strengthen our food safety system. S.18, the Safer Meat and Poultry Act, would give USDA enforcement options other than its "atomic bomb" authority of withdrawing inspection. S. 823, the Fruit and Vegetable Safety Act, would require all fruit and vegetable processors to meet existing Good Manufacture Practices. And, S. 2760, the Microbiological Performance Standard Clarification Act, would clarify USDA's authority to issue and enforce microbiological performance standards for reducing pathogens. These bills, together, represent solid steps towards a stronger system.

During the past few years with the leadership of the current Administration, we have made good headway in reducing the unacceptable toll of illness and death from foodborne disease. In fact, from 1996 to 1999 the incidence of foodborne disease has fallen 20%. Congress, too, has done its part by working to substantially increase funding for food safety programs.

This success by no stretch means we are finished. Foodborne illness continues to be a major public health threat. We need to continue to make sure our food safety system is up to the challenges before it. We need to continue to make sure we are investing in education and new food safety technologies. And we need to make sure we have a regulatory system in place that is as effective and efficient as possible.

HACCP has gotten us a long way towards a stronger and science-based food safety system, particularly in the meat and poultry industry. This success has been based on the twin goals of enlisting industry to help find the best ways to address food safety risks, and ensuring that food is safer over all by trying to reducing the risks from pathogens on meat and poultry products nationwide.

In the past year, USDA's legal authority to enforce its microbiological performance standards has been seriously challenged. This development directly undercuts USDA's attempt to create a standard based on the logic that reducing the level of pathogens on food nationwide will benefit the public's health.

We need to address this question directly. If we are going to give companies more and more responsibility and authority to run their own food safety programs in a plant, how do we ensure that companies nationwide are reducing pathogens? If we don't have some measure of plant's performance, how do we verify that HACCP is really doing its job? There needs to be enforcement at some point if consumers are to have any confidence in the system. There needs to be some guarantee that plants are being held to some minimum level of performance in reducing pathogens.

There are clearly questions that must be answered. We need to find out how HACCP regulations and Microbiological Performance Standards can best be enforced. How we can best allocate food safety resources to address the food safety risks of greatest public health concern. How USDA and FDA inspectors can best be utilized to ensure the safety and wholesomeness of the products they are responsible for. I don't think any of these questions have easy answers, but we have a responsibility to the public to come up with the best solutions we can.

This hearing should shed light on where we have had successes, and where we need to improve. I am committed to seeking that improvement-to ensuring that we have a food safety system that ensures a safe and abundant supply of food. A system that works for everyone in the food chain, from farm to table.