FDA agrees to deadlines on food safety overhaul
February 20, 2014, 03:51 pm
By Ben Goad
Margaret Hamburg Photo
The largest American food safety
update in 70 years will be complete by spring 2016 under the terms of a
settlement announced Thursday between food safety advocates.
Seven separate rules under
construction at the Food and Drug
Administration are designed to shift the national food safety net from a
system geared to respond to illness outbreaks to one designed to prevent them.
The regulations are required by
the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act, which set a 2012 deadline for them to
be finalized. But the process has been fraught with delays, which prompted the
Center for Food Safety (CFS) to file a lawsuit against the FDA over the missed statutory deadlines.
A consent agreement filed Thursday
in federal district court in Oakland,
Calif., cements a new, staggered
set of deadlines for the rules.
“This is a major victory for the
health and safety of the American people. The first major update to our food
safety laws since 1938 must now be implemented in a close-ended, timely
fashion,” said George Kimbrell, the Center’s lead attorney. “That means safer
food for American families.”
An earlier federal ruling sided
with the advocacy group, directing the agency to complete all of the rules by
next year. The agency appealed, and Michael Taylor, the FDA’s deputy
commissioner for foods, told The Hill late last year that the court-ordered
deadlines would be “enormously challenging.”
As part of the settlement
agreement, the FDA has dropped its appeal in exchange for a new set of
deadlines, according to the CFS.
Under the new deadlines,
regulations for preventative control for human and animal food at factories and
warehouses must be finalized by next August. Rules for produce, and to shore up
safety of imported food must be complete in the months after that.
Regulations meant to protect
against attacks on the nation’s food supply must be in place by the end of
March 2016, under the settlement.
“This is the best possible result,
because it provides for robust public participation in the process, yet ensures
certainty for its timely conclusion," Kimbrell said.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Margaret A.
Hamburg is the commissioner for the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the VP for the Nuclear Threat Initiative (think tank).
Note: Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace (think
tank) was a funder for the Nuclear
Threat Initiative (think tank).
Jessica Tuchman Mathews is a director
at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (think
tank), the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(think tank), a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg
(think tank), was an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think
tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think tank).
Ed Griffin’s interview with
Norman Dodd in 1982
(The investigation into the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace uncovered the plans for population
control by involving the United
States in war)
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (think tank), and the Brookings Institution (think
tank).
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Mark B. McClellan
was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and a commissioner
for the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA).
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