The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) announced late last week that it will hold a hearing on reforming the food safety system on Thursday.
The HELP committee is currently considering the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] Food Safety Modernization Act, or S. 510, which is similar to an FDA reform bill that passed the House in July.
The legislation has been sitting in committee since last March, when Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced the bill.
There have been no hearings on S. 510 specifically, though the Senate Agriculture Committee did hold a hearing on food safety in February in response to the nationwide peanut butter Salmonella outbreak, which sickened over 600 people and killed nine.
The committee will hear from a panel of food safety experts including Dr. Margaret Hamburg, Commissioner of the FDA, Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of Food Safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Michael Roberson, of the Food Marketing Institute, Daniel L. Ragan from the North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services, and Thomas Stenzel, the President and CEO or the United Fresh Produce Association.
The hearing, formally titled “Keeping America’s Families Safe: Reforming the Food Safety System,” will be held this Thursday at 10 a.m. in room 430 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Live streaming audio and video will be available on the HELP committee website.
