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Salmonella? Blame Congress.

Reason for outrage in the wake of the tomato-linked salmonella outbreak: McClatchy reports on how the House and Senate scaled back or killed outright proposed food safety proposals - partly due to bureaucratic disarray, partly to curry favor with agri-corporations. The new farm bill emerging from Congress reflects those omissions.

The Senate, for instance, originally wanted a new 15-member food-safety commission to conduct a wide-ranging study and issue recommendations. The proposed commission ran into opposition in the House of Representatives, and negotiators killed it.

Similarly, Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., wanted to move border plant and animal inspectors back to the Agriculture Department. The demoralized inspectors feel shortchanged under the Department of Homeland Security, congressional investigators said. The Bush administration opposed the transfer, and the provision died.

“The agriculture committees’ orientation is not food safety,” Waldrop said. “You can make small, incremental steps, but you are never going to make big structural food-safety changes through a farm bill.”

Reasons?

Politically, the House and Senate agriculture committee members who write the farm bill tend to be protective of agribusiness. They aren’t out to make enemies by imposing strict new rules.

Procedurally, responsibility for food safety is scattered among some 15 federal agencies. The farm bill focuses on the Agriculture Department, which handles meat and poultry. Produce and seafood are handled by the Food and Drug Administration. The standalone phrase “Food and Drug Administration” doesn’t appear anywhere in the 673-page farm bill conference report, and the FDA is largely outside the bill’s coverage.

Tactically, some lawmakers feared that a food safety commission would sap momentum for a more ambitious FDA overhaul. On Thursday, a House Energy and Commerce Committee panel will hold a hearing on the FDA’s food-safety work, with some House members pressing to give the federal agency mandatory-recall authority over tainted food.

“This situation is another chilling example of the flaws in our nation’s food-safety system,” declared Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo.

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