The Food and Drug Administration, charged with preventing E. coli outbreaks similar to the one that sickened thousands in Europe, is trying to wedge $1.4 billion for a new food-safety law into a budget that Republicans have already cut for next year.
A vote in the Republican-controlled House last month to reduce the FDA’s fiscal 2012 food-safety budget by 10 percent to $752 million, the agency estimates, will slow the law’s progress if enacted, say supporters of the January legislation. Representative Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican who oversees the budgets of the FDA and theU.S. Department of Agriculture, said increases are uneccessary because the food supply is “99.9 percent safe."
That view may be short-sighted, given the type of epidemic in Europe, said Bill Marler, a Seattle attorney who represents food poisoning victims. The outbreak among those who ate German-grown sprouts was deadlier than earlier E. coli epidemics because it combined traits of two strains, raising risks for a potentially fatal kidney complications.
“We have all of the tools to prevent a disaster like Germany’s,” Marler said in an interview. “It’s just a matter of, are we willing to pay for it.”
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