March 15, 1999

STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY

                              THE WHITE HOUSE
 
                       Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release                                      March 15, 1999
 
 
                     STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY
 
The President's Council on Food Safety/ National Academy of Sciences Report
 
     Today the President's Council on Food Safety released its response to
the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report, "Ensuring Safe Food from
Production to Consumption." The Council response supports all the goals
contained in the NAS's recommendations to strengthen the food safety
system.
 
     The National Academy of Sciences report, "Ensuring Safe Food From
Production to Consumption," made three basic conclusions: (1) an effective
and efficient food safety system must be based on science; (2) the current
statutes governing food safety should be revised in order to achieve a food
safety system based on science; and (3) Congress should enact legislation
to establish a unified and central framework for managing federal food
safety programs, which should be headed by a single official with
responsibility for all federal food safety activities.
 
     The Council agrees with these conclusions and lauds the NAS report as
a constructive contribution to efforts to improve the effectiveness of the
federal food safety system through the strengthening of science and risk
assessment, strategic planning, and better federal integration with state
and local governments.
 
     The President stated: "I am committed to ensuring the safety of
America's food supply, and the NAS report will play a key role in our
continuing efforts to establish a seamless, science-based food safety
system.  I call on Congress to support the changes necessary to make our
food as safe as possible."
 
     The Council responded to each of the recommendations in the NAS report
with the specific assessments briefly described below:
 
     Recommendation: The food safety system should be based on science. The
     Council agrees and provides numerous examples where this is already
     the case, including the development and implementation of the FoodNet
     and PulseNet systems for surveillance and identification of foodborne
     pathogens and the implementation of new science-based inspections of
     meat, poultry, and seafood.  The Council has also identified areas
     that should be strengthened such as improving the ability to assess
     health risks from pathogens in food.
 
                                  -more-
 
     Recommendation: Federal statutes should be based on scientifically
     supportable risks to public health.  The Council agrees and will call
     on Congress to work with it to create scientifically-based statutes to
     promote food safety.  The Council will conduct a thorough review of
     existing statutes and determine what can be accomplished with existing
     regulatory flexibility and what improvements will require statutory
     changes.
 
      Recommendation: A comprehensive national food safety plan should be
     developed.  The development of such a plan is already underway and is
     one of the primary functions of the Council.  One component of the
     plan will be exploring methods to assess the comparative health risks
     to the nation's food supply.
 
     Recommendation: A new statute should be enacted that establishes a
     unified framework for food safety programs with a single official with
     control over all federal food safety resources.  The Council supports
     the goal of a unified framework for food safety programs and will
     conduct an assessment of structural models and other mechanisms to
     strengthen the federal food safety system through better coordination,
     planning, and resource allocation.
 
     Recommendation: Agencies should work more effectively with partners in
     state and local governments.  The Council agrees that the roles of
     state, tribal, and local governments in the food safety system are
     critical and that their efforts deserve the formal recognition that
     partnership in a national food safety system conveys.
 
     The President established the Council on August 25, 1998 to develop a
comprehensive strategic plan for federal food safety activities and ensure
that federal agencies annually develop coordinated food safety budgets.
 
 

This is a mirror of the White House press release, March 15, 1999, from the <http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/html/briefroom.html> White House Briefing Room.