Energy Committee Hearing on the FDA and Food Safety
Watch the hearing live via committee webcast or on C Span 3.
Rep. Jay Inslee (WA-01) gives opening remarks:
| Rep. Inslee: "If we invested one tenth of the amount of time, money, and effort that we do on the war on terrorism on these food safety poisonings, we would reduce, probably by a factor of ten, the poisonings of Americans, which are in the tens of thousands every year. I would suggest in this hearing if we think of this threat in these terms, then we will respond accordingly." |
Rep. Diana DeGette (CO-01) gives opening remarks:
| Rep. DeGette: "It's just incredible to me that the FDA is proposing to close over half the food and drug safety field laboratories. One of those seven laboratories is the Denver Laboratory -- closing this lab would affect approximately 50 chemists, microbiologists, and analysts and the important work that they do for our community... Seems like work we need to be doing, given the recent revelations. Today, I'd like to find out how the FDA can justify closing one of the nation's preeminent food and drug research laboratories at a time when we have almost daily revelations about contaminated food." |
Senior Committee Investigator David Nelson gives opening testimony on behalf of the bipartisan investigators on what they found in visits to various FDA labs:
| David Nelson: "Simply stated, the FDA lacks sufficient resources and authority to ensure food safety, and legislation will be needed to correct these deficiencies. The current proposal to change FDA's structure and management would appear to exacerbate the current food safety situation. Lastly, FDA's current regulatory approach, which relies on voluntary guidelines for most domestic and imported foods appears inadequate in responding to the changing food industry." |
Rep. DeGette questions Committee Investigator Kevin Barstow and others on the closings of various FDA labs:
| Barstow: "Morale at every laboratory we visited was very low." Rep. Degette: "I imagine it was particularly low at the labs slated to be closed." Barstow: "Exactly." Rep. Degette: "Did those scientists tell you that they were going to transfer to the other labs?" Barstow: "No, very few did. I believe numbers were 2 in San Francisco, 2 in Denver, 6 in Kansas City and 2 at the Winchester lab." Rep. Degette: "Two that planned to transfer and the all the rest were not going to. So that's experience we would just lose if we closed those labs." Barstow: "Right, probably thousands of years." |