poetrychic

i recently received this email from our senior senator dick durbin...i had written to him in the past about food safety and while he responded at the time, i was kind of surprised to get the update:

Dear ():

Since you have contacted me in the past about food safety, I wanted to update you about legislation Congress recently passed to help protect American consumers.

The Farm Bill the Senate passed in December 2007 includes several important initiatives to improve the safety of our nation's food supply. This legislation would create a new food safety commission that will make specific recommendations to Congress regarding improvements to our food safety system. Food production plants would be required to report to the federal government, within 24 hours, a contamination in the food supply. In addition, the legislation calls for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services to establish regulations within the next 12 months regarding the sanitary transportation of food.

Congress also recently passed the Consolidated Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2008 (H.R. 2764), which provides $1.71 billion for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The measure allocates $513 million for the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition's food safety efforts, $60 million more than the 2007 appropriation and $46 million above the President's budget request.

This additional funding for the FDA, along with $930 million in funding for the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), will allow federal agencies to hire additional food safety inspectors and increase support for state inspection facilities.

Obtaining this increase was a hard-fought battle. Congress crafted a budget for FY 2008 that would have invested $22 billion above President Bush's inadequate budget request in order to address important priorities of the American people. The President vetoed or threatened to veto the appropriations bills Congress developed to implement those goals.

In the end, we had to trim the funding bills to address the President's demands, but we were able to preserve funding increases in a number of crucial areas, including food safety.

I also have introduced the Safe Food Act (S. 654), which would create a single agency to oversee food safety and standardize our food safety laws. I will continue to work for passage of this legislation in the coming year and will continue to support robust funding for our food safety efforts.



Sincerely,

Richard J. Durbin

United States Senator



RJD/jc

i love it when they write back

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