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We were first introduced to Food & Water Watch during an effort to maintain local control of the publicly owned water system in our area. We have continued to support the efforts of FWW as they lobby for the best interests of the people of this planet.
Jennifer Neylon
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Food & Water Watch > Press Releases > Senate Appropriations Budget Maintains Food Safety Funding, Vast Improvement Over House Version
September 7th, 2011

Senate Appropriations Budget Maintains Food Safety Funding, Vast Improvement Over House Version

Statement from Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director, Food & Water Watch

Washington, D.C. – “Today the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a fiscal year 2012 budget for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration that maintains critical funding for food safety, a vast improvement over the food safety funding levels found in the appropriations bill passed by the House earlier this summer.

“The Senate version of the bill also maintains funding that allows USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to conduct meat and poultry inspection without having to resort to inspector furloughs, ensuring that this critical public health program is not interrupted and allowing meat and poultry facilities to keep operating. And unlike the House version, the bill adopted today does not expand a controversial pilot program called the HACCP-based Inspection Models Pilot (HIMP) program in poultry plants. HIMP is a blatant attempt to reduce the number of FSIS inspectors by allowing more industry self-inspection and the Senate appropriators were correct to not expand it.

“Under the new Food Safety Modernization Act, the FDA has a long list of new responsibilities and programs to help make our food supply safer. It’s encouraging that the Senate bill does not include the cuts to FDA’s food safety program that are found in the House version, but the agency will still need even more resources to be able to meet its new responsibilities, especially increasing inspections of domestic and foreign food processing establishments.

“As the appropriations process moves forward, we urge members of Congress to make sure that USDA and FDA have the resources they need to protect public health with strong food safety programs. The Senate version of the appropriations bill for FY 2012 provides those resources and these funding levels should be adopted by the full Senate and the conference committee.”

Contact: Anna Ghosh, aghosh(at)fwwatch.org, 415-293-9905

Food & Water Watch works to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping shared resources under public control.

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