Tom Harkin: “today I am introducing the Meat and Poultry Pathogen Reduction Act of 2002. On December 6, 2001, the Fifth Circuit Court…”

“today I am introducing the Meat and Poultry Pathogen Reduction Act of 2002. On December 6, 2001, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld and expanded an earlier District Court decision that removes the U.S. Department of Agriculture's, USDA, authority to enforce its Pathogen Performance Standard for Salmonella. Passage of this bill is vital because the Fifth Circuit's decision in Supreme Beef v. USDA, Supreme Beef, seriously weakens the substantial food safety improvements adopted by USDA in its 1996 Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point and Pathogen Reduction, HACCP, rule. According the Fifth Circuit's opinion in Supreme Beef, today, USDA does not have the authority to enforce Performance Standards for reducing viral and bacterial pathogens. This decision seriously undermines the new meat and poultry inspection system. The Pathogen Performance Standard rule recognized that bacterial and viral pathogens were the foremost food safety threat in America, responsible for 5,000 deaths, 325,000 hospitalizations and 76 million illnesses each year. To address the threat of foodborne illness, USDA developed a modern inspection system based on two fundamental principles. The first was that industry has the primary responsibility to determine how to produce the safest products possible.…”