Joe Pitts: “At the Energy and Commerce Committee, food safety has been a bipartisan priority. We have held numerous hearings during…”

“At the Energy and Commerce Committee, food safety has been a bipartisan priority. We have held numerous hearings during the last two Congresses, examining food safety problems involving peppers and peanut butter and what we can do to solve those problems. During those hearings, we have heard about how much work our Nation's farmers, manufacturers, and distributors do to put low-cost, high-quality food on the tables of more than 300 million people every day. We also have heard about how much our Nation's children and our Nation's farmers and small businesses can be hurt when one irresponsible actor sells adulterated, contaminated food. Thanks to helpful testimony from hearing witnesses and hard work by our committee members, we were able to come up with some good ideas to help solve those food safety problems. Those ideas were found in the Food Safety Enhancement Act, which passed the House in July of 2009 and represented the bipartisan work of Chairman Waxman, Chairman Emeritus Dingell, Chairman Pallone, Chairman Stupak, Governor-Elect Deal, and Ranking Member Shimkus. The Food Safety Enhancement Act passed more than 16 months ago. The Senate finally passed its food safety bill, the Food Safety Modernization Act, Senate 510, during the lame duck session. The provisions of Senate 510 are contained in the bill that we are considering today with no substantive changes from what passed the Senate 3 weeks ago.”