Dear Friend,

I am happy to inform you that the House of Representatives passed Food Safety legislation as part of a larger Congressional budget action yesterday, propelling it even closer to our President’s desk to become law and ensure safer food for American families.

The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act is a giant leap forward for our food safety system. It will give the Food and Drug Administration much needed tools to oversee our food system, track down dangerous illness-causing pathogens and respond quickly to food borne illness outbreaks.  What is more, it will put to use available technology to better prevent food borne illnesses from taking hold and spreading in the first place.  It will also implement safety standards for imported food, thereby ensuring that foreign food processors who want to sell to us are held to equally high standards of safe food.  All these measures will be instrumental in bringing our food safety system into the 21st century, and keeping Americans safe.

The House passed my original version of the Food Safety bill with bipartisan support in summer 2009.  It moved into the Senate where it was delayed for more than a year until it finally passed on November 30, 2010.  Revenue additions made in the Senate, by Constitutional law, should have originated in the House, so we in the House fixed the constitutional discrepancy and passed the bill once again. This time we grouped it with a larger, time-sensitive budgetary measure – The Continuing Resolution Act – to protect it from stubborn Senate Republicans who tend to drag their feet on any Democrat-authored legislation – even that which is sorely needed to keep Americans safe.

We hope for movement in the Senate on Food Safety before the year’s end, and I look forward to sharing more good news with you soon.

With every good wish,

John Dingell