Durbin vows to completely change food safety standards

Well it's about time.  You can't buy your child anything from Fisher Price without worrying whether it contains harmful amounts of led.  Less than two months before the holiday shopping season begins, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) says the Democratic majority will soon write legislation that completely overhauls food safety laws in this country.

Part of the problem is that the job of overseeing food safety is split up between 12 departments.  Like what many wanted to do with FEMA following hurricane Katrina, Durbin wants to have one agency whose top priority it is to oversee food safety:

Responsibility for inspecting and keeping track of foodimports is currently split between the Food and Drug Administration , the Agriculture Department, and otherauthorities.

The FDA oversees about 80 percent of food imports, but asmall inspection team gets its hands on just a small fractionof that.

Durbin is also proposing a fee on all imported food, whichwould fund stepped-up inspection, and a single food safetyagency, but neither idea has received much traction so far. Itis unclear whether a radical step like sunsetting existingagencies would be more successful.

The Congress will attach a provision to a farm bill that phases out the existing laws on food safety.  New rules will then be made.