Hearing explores reform of U.S. food safety system; sets stage for Senate action this year

WASHINGTON – October 22, 2009 – The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee today held a hearing to discuss S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act and specific proposals for food safety reforms. Brian Cute, Vice President of Discovery Services for Afilias, a global provider of end-to-end supply chain traceability services, issued the following statement applauding the Committee’s effort and progress made toward establishing a national traceability system for food.

“Today was an important morning for food safety and it is encouraging that the committee is working on legislation that will create a national food tracing system. The establishment of a robust and effective food tracing system will provide the FDA with the information it needs to conduct targeted and effective recalls, protect industry from losses, and most importantly, restore Americans’ confidence in their food supply.

“As a top priority, S.510 must enable government, industry and technologists to work together through pilot projects to develop a scalable and interoperable food traceability system that ensures all players in the food supply chain will embrace technologies to meet the traceability requirements set out in the bill. As a traceability technology provider, Afilias looks forward to working with the Congress and the FDA and providing our expertise through pilot projects to demonstrate which technologies available today will best deliver ‘farm to fork’ traceability and make a national tracing system a reality.

“The House-passed food safety bill, H.R. 2749, makes great strides toward this end, including the establishment of pilots within the industry to develop a national tracing system. Afilias looks forward to the Senate taking a similar approach in its bill and hope that adequate funding and resources will follow to make these pilot projects possible.”

S. 510, FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, the Senate’s food safety reform bill that has garnered the most attention, contains provisions that require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish a pilot project to test and evaluate new methods for rapidly and effectively tracking/tracing fruits and vegetables in the event of a food-borne illness outbreak. Earlier this year, the House passed its version of food safety legislation, H.R. 2749, Food Safety Enhancement Act. H.R. 2749 contains more robust traceability provisions, in particular, requiring the Food and Drug Administration to issue regulations that require food producers, manufacturers, processors, transporters, or holders to maintain the full pedigree of the origin and previous distribution history of the food and to link that history with the subsequent distribution history of the food. It also establishes an interoperable record to ensure fast and efficient traceback. Prior to issuing such regulations, FDA would be required to conduct a feasibility study, public meetings, and pilot projects.

The Senate HELP committee will now work to schedule a markup of S.510.

About Afilias
Afilias is a global provider of Internet infrastructure services that connect people to their data. Afilias' reliable, secure, scalable, and globally available technology supports a wide range of applications including Internet domain registry services, Managed DNS, and services in the RFID and supply chain market with its Afilias Discovery Service.

About Afilias Discovery Services
Afilias Discovery Services is a standards-based hosted registry service providing true end-to-end traceability. ADS allows you to securely and selectively share "track and trace" information.  Fully interoperable and identifier agnostic, with ADS you can conduct surgically precise product recalls, improving consumer safety and confidence while reducing business impacts.