Friday, April 4, 2008 11:37 PM CDT
Braley talks food safety during visit to McKinstry
By JENS MANUEL KROGSTAD, Courier Staff Writer
WATERLOO --- Rep. Bruce Braley visited McKinstry Elementary Friday to tout a bill he introduced to create a national safety net for fresh produce.

Several salmonella and E. coli outbreaks from contaminated lettuce and spinach have hit the country in the last two years, including one in December 2006 at Taco John's that sickened about 50 people in the Cedar Valley.

Braley, a Democrat from Waterloo, said current safety regulations are so decentralized that too often infected food slips into the grocery store and onto people's plates.

Currently, the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services all play different roles in ensuring the safety of the nation's food supply.

"What this does is it makes clear that the line of responsibility goes directly to the secretary of the Health and Human Services department," he said.

In addition to giving the department the ability to enforce regulations on food growers, processors and manufacturers, the bill specifies that foreign countries must match U.S. food safety standards.

The importance of this became clear after a recent trip to the Mexico-U.S. border, Braley said. He saw loading docks full of trucks carrying fresh produce entering the country near Tucson, Ariz. Officials told him that they were unable to inspect every truck and crate coming in, despite the fact that they often find salmonella contamination during inspections. The entry port, Braley said, is responsible for 65 percent of fresh produce sold in the U.S. during the winter growing season.

"I don't think most people walk into a grocery store in Waterloo and realize that during the wintertime, chances are that produce they're seeing came in from a truck in Mexico, in a likelihood," he said.

Contact Jens Manuel Krogstad

at (319) 291-1580 or jens.krogstad@wcfcourier.com.
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