Remember that old Schoolhouse Rock video about bills becoming laws?
Two bills were passed recently that will likely mean progess for the health of our food system and children.
On December 2nd, the House passed the Child Nutrition Reauthorization bill. The $4.5 billion budget allocates $40 million for a new Farm to School program. Read the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition’s article about the bill. Interestingly, the bill passed unanimously in the Senate, but only passed 264 to 157 in the House.
A highly anticipated and debated bill was passed by the Senate on November 30th, the Food Safety Modernization Act. Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan advocated for the bill in a New York Times article.
The bill would, for the first time, give the F.D.A., which oversees 80 percent of the nation’s food, the authority to test widely for dangerous pathogens and to recall contaminated food. The agency would finally have the resources and authority to prevent food safety problems, rather than respond only after people have become ill. The bill would also require more frequent inspections of large-scale, high-risk food-production plants.
Another informative article (Schoolhouse Rock for adults – minus the interesting cartoon) by the NASC explains some of the hold up in getting the bill to President Obama, but the passage of S.510 will mean safer food for Americans by giving the FDA more control. Acoording to the article, “The bill…marks the most sweeping overhaul of food safety regulations in nearly a century.”
So often I have wondered why the government has not seemed to care about the many problems with our food system. I am encouraged that we are actually on the road to progress.
