Health Impact News Editor Comments: While at first glance a headline stating that funds are not available to implement a “food safety” law might seem negative, the opposite is true if you enjoy the freedom to choose your own food from small-scale family farms rather than the industrialized food factories.
As we have been reporting, the FDA has been spending your tax dollars on actions such as the year long secret sting operation against Pennsylvania Amish farmer Dan Allgyer, a provider of raw milk. In a recent statement, Obama food safety chief and former Monsanto lawyer Michael R. Taylor defended the FDA’s sting operations and armed raids against raw milk producers, and stated that the FDA was in the midst of writing the critical regulations that will implement the Food Safety Modernization Act Congress passed last year.
The sweeping new law gives the agency extraordinary powers to detain foods on farms. It also denies farmers recourse to federal courts. Before the new law, the FDA could only impound food when it had credible evidence the food was contaminated or posed a public health hazard. The detention powers are part of what Taylor described as a new agency focus on preventing food poisoning outbreaks rather than responding to them after the fact. Taylor described the new law as giving the agency “farm to table” control over food safety.
So the news that the House has cut the FDA budget and that the funding needed to implement the new food safety law might be in jeopardy, is actually good news for consumers who want a choice about where their food is coming from, and want to support small-scale family farmers committed to producing healthy food without interference from the government.
by Alliance for Natural Health
And with that budget hit, the so-called “food safety” law can’t be implemented—and no money to approve Frankenfish! This is huge!
Last week the House of Representatives passed the agriculture funding bill for fiscal year 2012, and the bill included a gigantic cut in FDA’s budget. This is particularly significant because they were tasked with implementing most of the provisions of the Food Safety Modernization Act that Congress passed last year.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost of implementing the Food Safety act would be $1.4 billion over five years. The whopping $285 million budget cut makes it likely that many of the enforcement and oversight provisions of the act will not be implemented. FDA told an industry publication just before the vote that if the House funding cuts were approved, there will be a “significant delay in implementation of the new Food Safety Modernization Act (including the law’s nineteen priority areas, especially import oversight, training, and inspections).”
Before final passage of the agriculture funding bill, the House approved an amendment by Rep. Don Young (R-AK) to prohibit the FDA from spending money to approve an application for the controversial genetically engineered salmon.
Now the funding bill moves on to the Senate. ANH-USA will work hard to make sure the GE salmon amendment stays in place. If it passes in the Senate as well, FDA will not be allowed to use its funds in FY2012 to approve genetically engineered salmon. This is a big win!
Read the full article here: http://www.anh-usa.org/house-cuts-fda-budget-by-285-million/
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