On Tuesday, November 30, a year after it was reported out of Committee, the Food Safety Modernization Act (S.510) passed the Senate, 73-25.

The bill will now be sent to the House for their consideration.  The House passed its own food safety bill (HR.2749) last year, but given the short time remaining in this Congress, it would be extremely difficult to go through a conference between the House and Senate and then bring a conference bill back to both bodies for another vote.  The only way to get the bill finished and signed into law is for the House to adopt the Senate bill and send it to the President.

The bill, which will require improved planning and record-keeping by food producers and processors and will allow the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)  to make mandatory recalls of contaminated food, marks the most sweeping overhaul of food safety regulations in nearly a century.

The final Senate bill includes six amendments that were worked on by NSAC and that each became part of the Manager’s amendment that the Senate has now approved.  Those include the amendments championed by:

* Senator Sanders (D-VT) providing FDA authority to either exempt farms engaged in low or no risk processing or co-mingling activities from new regulatory requirements or to modify particular regulatory requirements for such farming operations.  * Senator Bennet (D-CO) to reduce unnecessary paperwork and excess regulation required under the preventative control plan and the produce standards sections of the bill, including instructions to FDA to minimize the number of different standards that apply to separate foods, to make requirements scale appropriate, and to prohibit FDA from requiring farms and other food facilities to hire outside consultants to write food safety plans.  * Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) to provide for a USDA-delivered competitive grants program for food safety training for farmers, small processors and wholesalers, with a priority on small and mid-scale farms.