Food Safety Bill Imposes a New Annual Licensing Fee for Every Food-Manufacturing, -Processing and -Packing Plant, Generating $160 Million to Finance a Newly Empowered FDA

On January 4, 2011, President Obama signed into law H.R. 2751, the much-anticipated FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (the Act), bringing about the biggest reform of U.S. food safety regulation in decades. This bill gives the FDA greater regulatory powers over the national food supply and food providers 'with the goal of preventing food-borne illnesses and ensuring food safety.' More specifically, it would increase the frequency of FDA inspections of food processing plants, expand the FDA's traceback capabilities for when outbreaks do occur, give the FDA mandatory recall authority, and require food facilities to have safety plans in place in order to mitigate hazards. Concurrently, the bill would impose annual registration fees of $500 on all facilities holding, processing, or manufacturing food and require that such facilities also engaged in the transport or packing of food maintain pedigrees of the origin and previous distribution history of the food. The bill is an enhancement to H.R.759, and to a lesser extent, H.R. 857, previously proposed food safety bills in the 111th Congress.

Congress Finally Gets Tough on Food Safety

June 12, 2009

Time - Every few months, it seems, a new food-contamination scandal grips the nation, playing out in the same troubling way... Despite the toll — 5,000 deaths and 325,000 hospitalizations a year — Congress has typically been unwilling to strengthen controls on the growing, manufacturing and handling of food in the face of powerful industry resistance. But as profits and consumer confidence have plummeted with each new outbreak, the political climate has changed — so much so that earlier this week, a House panel reached unusual bipartisan consensus on the most sweeping reform of the food-safety system in at least 50 years.

The bill gives the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) broad new powers to regulate produce at the farm level and review corporate records on activities ranging from food-processing to pathogen-testing. Inspections that now occur an average of once every 10 years would take place as often as once every six months for certain items. Foreign governments whose companies send high-risk products to the U.S., like seafood from China, would be required to certify that those exports comply with U.S. health standards...

House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans who rarely cross party lines went along with the Democratic bill marked up in the health subcommittee Wednesday. Sponsors had agreed in negotiations with ranking GOP member Joe Barton to lower the originally proposed cost of a new annual licensing fee for every food-manufacturing, -processing and -packing plant from $1,000 to $500, with a $175,000 cap per company — a reduction also sought by GOP allies in industry.

Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman calls the fees — which would generate about $160 million — a "critical breakthrough" to finance a newly empowered FDA. But consumer advocates are not happy about the 50% cut. "If FDA doesn't have the money, it's hard for them to do the number of inspections needed," says Foreman...

Unless it gets bogged down by health-care legislation, the Senate is likely to approve some version of food-safety reform. The best assurance of stronger controls is the fear that inaction could lead to inevitable consequences. "What are they going to do," asks Foreman, "if there's another outbreak and they don't pass anything?"

HR 2749: Totalitarian Control of the Food Supply