Food Bill Happenings in Congress

by: Jill Richardson

Mon Nov 23, 2009 at 20:53:27 PM PST

S. 510 - The Food Safety Modernization Act: This bill is a mixed bag, as it gives us more food safety at the potential expense of small and sustainable producers. Progress has been made toward the requests of the sustainable ag community and people differ over whether they feel that the food safety needs justify supporting the flawed bill's passage, or whether they want to see the bill killed entirely. I expect this bill to ultimately pass Congress and the only question is how good (or bad) it will be for sustainable producers in the end. The bill just passed committee, which means the next stop is the Senate floor. Its already passed the House, and it just picked up a new co-sponsor, Sen. Bingaman in the Senate.

H.R. 1084 - The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act: This bill will require commercials to play at the same volume as the TV program they appear during. It just passed out of committee, which means its next stop is the House floor.

S. 850 - Shark Conservation Act - This fantastic bill would close up loopholes to prevent shark finning. The companion bill already passed the House in March, and the Senate version just passed this week. It also picked up new co-sponsors, Senators Snowe, Vitter, Rockefeller, and Bayh. I've pasted some information about the bill from Pew Environment Group below, and you can send an email to your Senator asking them to support the bill here.

H.R. 1523 - Ban Poisonous Additives (BPA) Act: This bill will ban BPA from food containers. It just picked up new co-sponsors, Rep. Louise Slaughter and Rep. Barney Frank. That brings it up to 60 co-sponsors in the House. The Senate version, S. 593, just picked up the support of Sen. Shaheen, bringing it up to a whopping total of 5 co-sponsors.

S. 619 - The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act: This bill says that if a class of antibiotics is important in human medicine, you can't use it on livestock that aren't sick (nontherapeutic use). You can still treat sick animals. This bill just picked up a new co-sponsor, Sen. Akaka.

H.R. 4022 - The Gulf Oyster Protection Act: This has to do with the recent flap over the FDA trying to regulate raw oysters due to food safety concerns. The bill has new co-sponsors Rep. Meek (D-FL) and Rep. Putnam (R-FL).

Key provisions of this important bill include:

·         Requires Fins Naturally Attached:  The bill specifically requires that sharks be landed (brought to port) with their fins naturally attached.  This provision will make the "fins attached" requirement consistent for fisheries in all U.S. waters and will aid in enforcement.

·         Eliminates Loopholes:  The bill prohibits all U.S. flagged vessels from having custody, control or possession of shark fins, with or without the corresponding carcass.

·         Ensures U.S. Competitiveness:  The Shark Conservation Act of 2009 amends the High Seas Driftnet Fishing Moratorium Protection Act to allow the U.S. to identify nations that do not have comparable shark conservation measures in place, with the potential to restrict shark product imports from those countries. This provision promotes shark conservation internationally and helps to ensure the competitiveness of the U.S. fishing fleet.  

Sharks are among the oceans' top predators.  They have roamed the seas for hundreds of millions of years, predating dinosaurs and surviving the harshest of climatic and geographic changes.  Unfortunately, many species of sharks are now threatened with extinction, but not from natural causes.  The wasteful practice of "finning" (slicing off a shark's fins and discarding the body at sea) is among the main threats confronting sharks.  Shark fins are used for the Asian delicacy shark fin soup and an estimated 73 million sharks are killed each year to support the global fin trade.

In 2000, Congress passed the Shark Finning Prohibition Act aimed at ending shark finning in U.S. waters and stopping the landing or transporting of shark fins without corresponding carcasses.  This law allows for the fins to be removed on the vessel as long as a fin-to-carcass weight ratio is not exceeded. This "finning ratio" is difficult to enforce and hampers efforts to identify species and collect data.

Language in the 2000 law unfortunately left unintended loopholes that the fishing industry has exploited.  The most recent example is a lawsuit brought against the U.S. Coast Guard by a U.S. flagged vessel over shark finning charges.  In 2008, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that, although the King Diamond II was transporting 32 tons of unattached fins (estimated to represent some 30,000 sharks), it was not in violation of the U.S. Shark Finning Prohibition Act because the ship was not technically classified as a fishing vessel.[3]   This clear misinterpretation of Congressional intent by the courts illustrates the need for new legislation.

The House companion bill to S. 850A, the Shark Conservation Act of 2009 (H.R. 81) introduced by Rep. Madeline Bordallo (Guam), passed in March 2009 by unanimous consent.  We are hopeful that the bill will go before the U.S. Senate quickly, and be signed into law before the end of the year.