Tell Congress: It's Time to Check Behind the Barn Door

Tell your members of Congress to support the Expanded Food Safety Investigation Act of 2019, which would grant new authority to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate corporate livestock feedlots and confinement operations implicated in foodborne illness outbreaks.

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Dear {contact_data~title} {contact_data~lastName}:

I am writing to urge you to support the Expanded Food Safety Investigation Act of 2019, which would grant new authority to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate corporate livestock feedlots and other concentrated animal feeding operations implicated in foodborne illness outbreaks.

I care about whether the food I eat is safe, so it’s important to me that public health investigators are able to investigate and solve foodborne disease outbreaks – including when those outbreaks start out on large animal farms.

CBS News 60 Minutes and the New York Times have detailed how it can be impossible for public health officials to trace foodborne outbreaks back to the source on animal farms – even during outbreaks involving dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

In 2018, the FDA was unable to solve a deadly E coli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce grown in Yuma, Arizona. The agency could not investigate a large cattle feedlot near the lettuce farms that were involved in the outbreak without first getting permission from the feedlot owners. Public Health Officials were ultimately allowed only “limited sampling,” which was inadequate to draw any conclusions.

The Expanded Food Safety Investigation Act of 2019 (S. 2958, H.R 5415), would solve this problem by giving the FDA authority to investigate foodborne outbreaks on large animal farms. Discovering which farms have spread the disease-causing germs into the food system is an important way to help stop outbreaks.

The bill was introduced by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and Congresswomen Rosa DeLauro and Jackie Speier. It has been endorsed by Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Consumer Federation of America, Food & Water Watch, Consumer Reports, the Food Animal Concerns Trust, and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Please support this bill today.

Sincerely,

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