HR 2749 - A Stealth Agribusiness Empowering Act

These requirements apply to local as well as others engaged in interstate commerce.

A detailed food safety plan is required as well that includes effective controls, monitoring, corrective action, verification, extensive record keeping, and other procedures that will be time consuming and expensive enough to put many small producers out of business.

All registered facilities will be subject to federal inspection in contrast to current law that applies only to ones engaged in interstate commerce. FSEA also requires all food producers to make their records available to FDA inspectors on demand. It applies to "production, manufacture, processing, packing, transporting, distribution, receipt, (and) holding of (food) in any format and at any location."

According to FTCLDF, the "FDA would now be empowered to go on a 'fishing expedition' and search records without any evidence whatsoever" of a violation. Further, "farmers selling direct to consumers would have to provide the (FDA) with records on where they buy supplies, how they raise their crops, and a list of customers."

Currently, examination only applies if there is "a reasonable belief that an article of food is adulterated and presents a threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans and animals."

FSEA also imposes "traceability" provisions that require producers, processors, packers, transporters, and other food handlers to:

-- "maintain the full pedigree of the origin and previous distribution history of the food;

-- link that history with the subsequent history of the food;

-- establish and maintain a system for tracing the food (and)

-- use a unique identifier for each facility for such person for such purpose."

The above requirements leave many questions unanswered and may empower the FDA to enforce them onerously against small farmers, but loosely, if at all, for agribusiness because corporate officials run the agency and decide policy.

FSEA also empowers the FDA to impose growing standards called "science-based (ones) for the safe growing, harvesting, packing, sorting, transporting, and holding of raw agricultural commodities that - (1) are from a plant or a fungus; and (2) for which the Secretary has determined that such standards minimize the risk of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals."

This and other bill provisions mask FDA's dubious track record of serving corporate interests to the detriment of small farmers and consumers. By imposing costly and burdensome regulations, it will be easier to claim independent producers don't comply, ban their output as adulterated, and put them out of business.

Under current law, the FDA can prohibit food sales based on "credible evidence or information indicating (it) presents a threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to human or animals." FSEA's standard is based on only a "reason to believe that (the food) is adulterated, misbranded or otherwise in violation or this act." In other words, suspicion alone without proof can prohibit food sales and put small producers out of business.

FSEA also greatly increases the FDA's recall powers. It currently can request a voluntary recall, administratively detain food, or file a court order to seize and prohibit its distribution. FSEA goes further by empowering the FDA to recall food based on "reason to believe that the use or consumption of, or exposure to, (it) may cause adverse health consequences to human or animals." No proof is needed, just the word of corporate officials running these agencies for the companies they represent and will return to in high-paying jobs.

Based on "credible evidence or information," FSEA empowers the FDA to quarantine a geographic area to prevent "adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals...." Without court order and solely by notifying an "appropriate official of the State affected," food distribution and sales can be halted even by producers unrelated to the problem's source.

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