U.S. Senate negotiators apparently reached an agreement last week on food safety legislation in order to have it ready for the full Senate to consider when lawmakers return from the summer recess.

The group that negotiated the framework for the new Senate version of the Food Safety Modernization Act included Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.; the bill’s authors Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Judd Gregg, R-N.H.; and lead co-sponsors Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Richard Burr, R-N.C.

The bill would require facilities that manufacture, process, pack, or hold food to have in place risk-based preventive control plans to address identified hazards and prevent adulteration.  It requires importers to verify the safety of foreign suppliers and imported food. It would give the FDA additional resources to hire new inspectors and requires FDA to inspect food facilities more frequently. The bill gives the FDA authority to order a mandatory recall of a food product if the food will cause serious adverse health consequences or death and a company has failed to voluntarily recall the product upon FDA’s request. It has provisions to enhance surveillance systems to detect food-borne illnesses.

Significantly, this version does not include language banning BPA, as originally demanded by Sen. Feinstein.  Her prior insistence, despite a lack of scientific evidence supporting such a ban, was one of the major logjams for the bill. She says she still plans to introduce an amendment to ban BPA from children’s products as soon as the bill arrives on the Senate floor.  Clearly, an abrupt and unnecessary ban on packaging containing BPA would affect consumer ability to find nutritious, valuable, and shelf-stable foods and beverages. The proposed ban runs counter to the fact that BPA has been used for over 30 years to improve the safety and quality of food and beverages, including by providing protective coating for cans. The overwhelming scientific evidence points to the conclusion that at current human exposure levels, BPA is not toxic. What is in fact occurring is that anti-chemical activists are simply manipulating consumers’ fears, and opportunistic politicians are jumping in.