[OT] Victory! Leahy's Draconian Food Safety Bill Language Defeated For Now!

[Guest guest]

Received this great news yesterday from the Alliance for Natural Health.

http://www.anh-usa.org/

We're thrilled to announce that today that, thanks to your

calls and letters, the Senate Food Safety bill (S. 510) will not

include those obscene ten-year jail sentences for food and supplement

manufacturers who violate complicated FDA rules. Senate offices were

deluged with your messages, and the Senate leadership listened to you!

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) is the manager of S. 510. He has pulled together what is

called a Manager's Amendment, which will replace S. 510; that package does not

include the language from Sen. Leahy's bill. Therewas a unanimous consent

agreement in the Senate on Wednesday as to what amendments will or will not be

raised when the bill is debated on Monday, November 29. Senate Majority Leader

Harry Reid (D-NV) says they have agreed to " up to five " amendments, mostly

procedural, and ANH-USA has been assured by Sen. Harkin's office that Sen.

Leahy's bill is not among them. Neither the bill nor its language can be

considered without another unanimous consent vote by the entire Senate, so that

issue is now dead.

ANH-USA has further learned that Sen. Hatch worked with Sen. Leahy to remove a

section from the Leahy bill that specifically targeted supplements and made a

lapse in filing to the FDA subject to the full ten-year jail term (see the

reference to subsection V of Section 301 of the Federal Food and Drug Act).

This is important, because this was the worst part of the bill, and Sen. Leahy

could attempt to pass his bill again, either during the Lame Duck session or in

the next Congress. We are grateful to Sen. Hatch and Sen. Leahy for working

together to remove this provision.

This is the second S. 510 victory for ANH-USA members and allies. You may

remember that last year we were able to make sure the bill did not require the

development of a plan to harmonize with the Codex Alimentarius, which would have

reduced access to higher, therapeutic doses of nutrients in dietary supplements.

http://aahf.convio.net/site/R?i=ogjDD9hZq2rvF4egiCFHJw..

We're pleased that now no one will be putting small food and supplement

producers (even mom-and-pop operations) in jail for ten years simply for running

afoul of mindlessly complex FDA rules. This is an exciting day for natural

health and health freedom.

Some background, for readers who haven't been following the bill's progress as

closely:

The House version of the Food Safety bill passed some time ago. That bill

includes draconian ten-year jail terms for even minor paperwork violations. Long

jail terms were explicitly rejected by the Senate committee that put together

the Senate's version of the bill. But Sen. Leahy (D-VT) introduced his

own bill, the Food Safety Accountability Act (S. 3767). This bill adds back the

ten-year jail terms for adulterating or misbranding food.

Bear in mind, the FDA defines those terms in its own way. In the FDA's view,

" adulteration " includes recordkeeping violations, while " misbranding " includes

citing peer-reviewed science about the benefits of a dietary supplement. This

new threat of sanctions would have given the FDA a hammer with which to threaten

and coerce companies engaging in completely legal activities.

Sen. Leahy subsequently amended his bill to reserve the jail terms for someone

who " consciously or recklessly disregard a risk of death or serious bodily

injury. " But of course, what is conscious or unconscious, intentional or

unintentional, is to be decided by FDA prosecutors. No actual harm is necessary!

The good news is that with the help of people like you, who

were willing to speak out on what they considered an unjust threat, we

were able to keep the Leahy language out of S. 510. Thank you-this

victory belongs to all of us!