Thursday, November 18, 2010<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I want to start by thanking Chairman Harkin, who worked with me to include provisions to help small farms and processors and organic farms so that they have before them in this bill provisions that support them and will help make them successful. The last thing we want to see is an effort to make our food safety system work better be used as a tool to diminish the ability of small farms and organic farms to thrive, and that\u2019s been effectively addressed in the bill, but also by provisions that I\u2019ll speak to in awhile that Senator Tester is bringing forward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019d also like to compliment Senator Durbin, who has been advocating for this bill, working on the elements of this bill for a very long time, and his determined, tenacious advocacy is the reason that this bill is on the floor before us at this moment. I also appreciate the bipartisan problem-solving approach of the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Senator Enzi, and all the members of the committee for coming together to say: this is not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem – this is a national health care issue – a national nutrition issue, and let\u2019s tackle it together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The safety of the nation\u2019s food supply is a serious concern for every family, for every family in Oregon, for every family across this nation. But I\u2019d like to highlight one family in particular, Jake Hurly and his dad, Peter. And I\u2019m sure that they are very happy to see that we have this bill on the floor, and they will be particularly thrilled when we have it on the President\u2019s desk, because the issue of tracing contaminated food is an issue that affected their family very directly. This picture is a picture of Jake taken when his father Peter came with him to Washington, D.C. to testify before this Congress and share their story. Jake\u2019s favorite food was peanut butter crackers. When he was three years old, he became very, very ill, and those crackers that he loved so much were the source of his illness. But because we didn\u2019t have an effective tracking system, there was no recall, there was no understanding that the crackers were contaminated and so in his illness, his family continued to share with him his favorite comfort food, those same peanut butter crackers that were already making him extremely ill. Turns out, those crackers were contaminated with salmonella and the result was that a child\u2019s snack ended up putting Jake\u2019s life in danger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Food and Drug Administration had already determined that peanut butter was a cause of sickening people across the country, but they hadn\u2019t been able to trace the peanut butter and know that it had made its way into processed products, and in particular the product that Jake was consuming. The Peanut Corporation of America, the peanut processing facility in Georgia, had contaminated peanut butter that went into thousands of products, sickening 714 people in 46 states, including Oregon, and killing nine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Hurley\u2019s and countless other families have been waiting for Congress to pass this bill so that families don\u2019t have to be worried that their children will become terribly sick because we can\u2019t track contaminated food. This bill requires the FDA to create rules for tracing processed food like the crackers that made Jake sick. It took the FDA over a year to trace all the products that the peanut butter went into in that outbreak in 2009, and it\u2019s not clear that they ever found all of the products. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Esto es inaceptable. Las disposiciones de este proyecto de ley ayudar\u00e1n a prevenir no s\u00f3lo futuros brotes, sino tambi\u00e9n futuros problemas para rastrear los productos contaminados. En mi trabajo en el Comit\u00e9 HELP, consegu\u00ed una disposici\u00f3n que adem\u00e1s del seguimiento de los productos agr\u00edcolas, que ya estaba en el proyecto de ley, estableciera un proyecto piloto para calcular las mejores pr\u00e1cticas para el seguimiento de los alimentos procesados, lo cual es una tarea m\u00e1s dif\u00edcil. Pero despu\u00e9s de que este proyecto de ley sali\u00f3 del comit\u00e9, mi colega, el Senador Sherrod Brown, trabaj\u00f3 duro para desarrollarlo y ha fortalecido a\u00fan m\u00e1s las disposiciones de rastreo en este proyecto de ley, y ciertamente quiero agradecerle por eso. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
El proyecto de ley ahora requiere que la FDA cree regulaciones que garanticen un rastreo r\u00e1pido y preciso de todo tipo de alimentos contaminados. Un mejor rastreo de los alimentos contaminados y una mejor coordinaci\u00f3n entre los funcionarios de seguridad alimentaria locales, estatales y federales pueden ayudar a evitar que ni\u00f1os como Jet Valenzuela sufran una intoxicaci\u00f3n alimentaria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I met Jet earlier this summer in Oregon. This is a picture of him in the hospital two years ago when he unexpectedly became violently ill from contaminated food. He had a deadly form of E. coli. He was hospitalized in Bend, Oregon. He became so ill he was flown to Portland for more intensive care. He underwent multiple surgeries, blood transfusions, and he was eventually put into a medically induced coma. He came within a hair\u2019s breadth of dying twice. The scariest part of Jet\u2019s story is that we were never able to find what made him sick despite best efforts, because we didn\u2019t have the kind of produce and processed food procedures that could assist in tracking down the source. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So for Jet and for Jake, it is urgent to pass this bill. Not only does this help respond, but it helps prevent food outbreaks. No family should have to go through what these families went through. Most parents, including myself, spend a lot of time worrying about how to keep their kids safe. But we shouldn\u2019t have to worry about how to protect our children from the food on their plates.
La implementaci\u00f3n de las disposiciones sobre seguridad alimentaria debe realizarse de manera que apoyen a nuestras peque\u00f1as granjas, nuestras granjas familiares. No podemos tener un proceso que les impida operar con \u00e9xito o que les ponga restricciones innecesarias en su camino. Y quiero agradecer al presidente Harkin por incluir el lenguaje en el proyecto de ley que suger\u00ed para que ninguna nueva regulaci\u00f3n entre en conflicto o duplique los requisitos del Programa Org\u00e1nico Nacional. Esto garantiza que no habr\u00e1 normas de seguridad alimentaria que pondr\u00edan en peligro la certificaci\u00f3n org\u00e1nica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I want to draw a lot of attention to the work that Senator Tester has done from Montana. He has authorized provisions that provide reasonable exemptions for very small farms and processors, farms that sell their products directly to local consumers, farms that sell their products directly to local restaurants or to local grocery stores. This comprises only about 1 percent of our national food production, but it\u2019s a very important part of our local economies, very important foundation for our family farms, and so I am proud to support the work that Senator Tester has done in making sure that our small local farms are fully accounted for and supported in this legislation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also in this bill are exemptions for farms that produce low-risk food, no matter what their size. This is the type of logical flexibility to make regulations apply when they\u2019re needed and not provide unnecessary restrictions or hurdles when they\u2019re not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In conclusion, I want to urge all my colleagues to support this bill. It will improve the tracing of contaminated food, whether that be produce, or whether that be processed. It will increase inspections, it will create safety guidelines for farms and processors, it will protect organic farms, it will protect small farms. This bill works to prevent contamination as well so we avoid unnecessary illness and death. Improvements to tracing contaminated food will not only prevent illness, it will prevent costly recalls for farms and food processors who are not at fault for particular contamination. And, most importantly, this bill will help other families avoid the nightmare that Jake and Jet went through and that their parents went through. Our parents should be able to pack their children\u2019s lunch boxes without fear.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thursday, November 18, 2010 I want to start by thanking Chairman Harkin, who worked with me to include provisions to help small farms and processors and organic farms so that they have before them in this bill provisions that support them and will help make them successful. The last thing we want to see is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsroom"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n