The U.S. House has adopted legislation that would exempt commercial fishing vessels from a proposed food-tracking system, but the Senate may not take a stance until next month. The provision was part of the Food Safety Enhancement Act, which was passed the House by a partisan vote of 283-141 on the final day of July.
The bill was introduced to help prevent food-borne illnesses, which sickens approximately 76 million Americans, or one in four, each year. Of these cases, an estimated 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The House-backed version originally included a number of safety initiatives, like requiring the Food and Drug Administration to develop in two years a new system for tracing contaminated food items to their sources within two business days.
The Southern Shrimp Alliance, a non-profit alliance of shrimp-producing states like Louisiana, weighed in during the drafting process and advocated for critical control points in the imported food chain and improving registration guidelines. But one point hit a nerve with coastal lawmakers: the need to remove fishing vessels from the proposed, interoperable food-tracking system.
Specifically, the legislation called for “each person who produces, manufactures, processes, packs, transports, or holds food” to “participate in a new traceability system.” Before the bill was passed, House Democrats attached an amendment excluding commercial shrimpers and fishermen from the provision.
Proponents noted that seafood is one of the few FDA-regulated food groups already strenuously watched under the current system of controls, including fishing vessels in the new traceability requirement would not be practical or enforceable. Commercial fishermen are also already working with the federal government to prepare product-specific plans, analyze potential safety hazards, determine where problems are likely to occur during processing and identify control points.
The Senate, meanwhile, is still working on its own version of the Food Safety Enhancement Act, but no major movement is expected until after Congress takes its traditional August break. Upon the Senate’s return, commercial fishermen won’t be the only ones watching the process, since farmers have something at stake as well.
The bill originally included several provisions, such as a flat registration fee of $500 per farm, new tracking requirement for wholesale farmers and duplicative regulations for organic farmers. But Agriculture Chairman Collin C. Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat, added several exemptions to the bill before the House passed it for farms, livestock, poultry and feed grain, all of which are already regulated by the federal Agriculture Department.
