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  3. On Food Safety, a Long List but Little Money A) This summer there has been a drumbeat of food-related illnesses. Strawberries

On Food Safety, a Long List but Little Money A) This summer there has been a drumbeat of food-related illnesses. Strawberries

admin2020-09-03  24
问题                   On Food Safety, a Long List but Little Money
   A) This summer there has been a drumbeat of food-related illnesses. Strawberries containing E. coli (大肠杆菌) killed one person in Oregon and sickened at least nine others. Imported papayas (木瓜) contaminated with salmonella (沙门氏菌) poisoned more than 200 people nationwide, with one dead. The landmark food safety law passed by Congress last December is supposed to reduce the frequency and severity of food safety problems, but the roll call of recent cases underlines the importance of the task.
   B) "It’s an enormous undertaking," said Mike Taylor, the Food and Drug Administration’s deputy commissioner for foods, whose job is to turn the far-reaching law into a coherent set of rules that farmers, food processors and importers can follow and regulators can enforce. The agency is taking on the expanded mission at a time when Washington budget-slashing (大幅削减预算) means that regulators have little hope of getting additional money and may instead have their budgets cut by Congress. Mr. Taylor said they didn’t have resources to implement the law. "The choice is we either find the resources or we give up implementing this law. You can’t build something brand-new without the resources to do it."
   C) The agency is now in the process of writing the food safety rules, with the goal of preventing outbreaks like those this summer. One of the most complex jobs involves setting standards for farmers to grow and harvest fruits and vegetables safely. The first draft of the farm rules is due early next year. The agency is expected to deal with basics like hand-washing stations for field workers, tests of irrigation water and measures to protect fields from wild animals that can track in bacteria.
   D) Yet the standards must take into account a huge variety of crops, farming practices and farm sizes. The task is all the more delicate because the agency has never before had a major presence on American farms.
   E) For a year and a half, well before Congress passed the food safety law, Mr. Taylor has visited farmers around the country and sought to ease their fears that an army of food safety officials will come storming through their fields telling them how to do their jobs. Recently, he visited Long Island, where he traveled through the sandy fields of the 30-acre Deer Run lettuce farm of Bob Nolan in Brookhaven with steps. Mr. Nolan said he was initially anxious about the new law but was now eager to help the agency make it work for farmers. Mr. Taylor was joined by several agency employees involved in writing the farm rules, and Mr. Nolan told them that he hoped the visit would help them better understand how a farm worked.
   F) The complexity of the FDA’s task became clear as the day went on. At the second stop, a potato farm in Riverhead, the owner Jimmy Zilnicki said that he knew little about what the government expected of him. "We’re all just trying to find out what this food safety thing is all about," he said. Besides, he argued, potatoes were a safe crop and he questioned whether it was worth including them in food safety rules. Mr. Taylor told him the FDA’s job was to focus most of its efforts where the food safety risks were greatest.
   G) The third stop was a 65-acre organic farm in Riverhead, run by Eve Kaplan Walbrecht and her husband, Chris. They grow a dizzying rank of crops, most of which they sell directly to customers through farmers’ markets and buying clubs. They, too, had made costly improvements with an eye toward food safety, including building a large processing shed with a concrete floor, treated water, a bathroom and refrigerated storage. The new law remits (免除) small farms that average less than $500 000 a year in sales and sell mostly to local customers. But Ms. Kaplan Walbrecht said that her farm brings in too much money to qualify for the exemption. She worried that the new law could become a burden for small farmers, either by adding paperwork or by unleashing (不加管束) regulators with little understanding of how a farm worked.
   H) But while farmers worry that the rules will be too severe, food safety advocates worry that budget cuts could render the law toothless. The Congressional Budget Office has said the FDA will need hundreds of millions of dollars in new financing to execute the law, and there appears little chance that Mr. Taylor will get it. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has passed a budget that largely eliminates new money for the FDA. The Democrat-controlled Senate has not made its own proposal. But advocates fear that the new Congressional super committee that is to propose cuts under the debt ceiling deal could further decrease the agency’s finances.
   I) The budget freeze or cuts would have the greatest impact on the ambitious increase in inspections called for under the new law, which strengthen each year. "Writing rules is inexpensive? enforcing them is expensive," said David W. Acheson, a former associate commissioner of the FDA who is now a food safety consultant. "There will be a public health impact because enforcement won’t be to the extent they want to do it." The agency has already said that, without lots of new money, it won’t be able to conduct the thousands of foreign food inspections the law would require after a few years. Increasing domestic inspections would be difficult, too. The FDA has about 1 000 inspectors trained to visit food establishments but most of them also inspect drug and medical device facilities. Hiring new inspectors or retraining existing ones is costly.
   J) So far, Mr. Taylor has won praise for the introduction of the new law. "I’ve never seen the agency go at anything with such enthusiasm," said Carol L. Tucker Foreman, a food policy expert at the Consumer Federation of America. But she feared that without a higher budget, the agency would take shortcuts. The law requires the most frequent inspections at the riskiest facilities and Ms. Tucker Foreman questioned whether the agency would simply classify fewer operations as high risk to make its job easier. Mr. Taylor said that would not happen. "We’re not going to game the system," he said.
No officials helped the farmers with the food safety problems before Mr. Taylor visited farmers around the country.
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