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Food Safety Bill Changes Proposed by ASQ and ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board Coalition

A coalition formed by ASQ and ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB and ACLASS brands) submitted a letter (PDF, 437 KB) offering comments and recommending changes to a food safety bill that is emerging from the U.S. Senate.

The coalition consists of multiple organizations with interests in standards-setting, conformity assessment, and food safety.

The letter offers clarifications and definitions meant to strengthen the bill—the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510) (PDF, 927 KB).

“These recommendations are intended to align the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act more closely with accredited third-party conformity assessment principles and practices used throughout industry and the U.S. Government,” stated Keith Greenaway, a vice president at the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board.

The letter makes the following recommendations:

  • That the bill should explicitly state that the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall consider the use of accredited third-party conformity assessment bodies to inspect food imported into the United States. 
  • The FDA should recognize existing infrastructure for laboratory accreditation that is already used by many federal agencies and industry.
  • It proposes changes to terms and definitions to make them consistent with terms currently used in commerce. And it brings the bill into alignment with aspects of the National Technology Transfer Advancement Act of 1996, which encourages the use of standards that are already in place.

The letter was hand delivered to all members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (H.E.L.P.) Committee as well as all sponsors of the bill during the week of April 19, 2010. ASQ also arranged meetings with several of the bill’s sponsors and members of the H.E.L.P. committee. It was signed by representatives of ASQ, ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board, American Association for Laboratory Accreditation, AEGIS Food Testing Laboratories, and EAGLE Food Registrations, Inc.

The chairman of the Senate H.E.L.P. committee, Tom Harkin (D-IA), intends to bring the bill to the Senate floor for a vote before the end of May. If passed, the Senate bill must go to conference to iron out differences with the food safety bill already passed by the House of Representatives (H.R. 2749 — Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009) (PDF, 402 KB).

The ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board is a non-profit, non-governmental, international and domestic recognized organization that provides accreditation services to public and private sector organizations. Its two brands, ACLASS and ANAB, combined have more than 20 years of experience in the accreditation of conformity assessment bodies for management systems, laboratories, inspection bodies, reference material producers and proficiency test providers.