The House Energy and Commerce Committee passed comprehensive food safety legislation on a broad bipartisan basis yesterday, setting the course for near-term passage by the full House of Representatives.

"Once this draft bill came together in May, there has been a fast-track effort by both Democrats and Republicans to reach agreement on a bill," said United Fresh Senior Vice President for Public Policy Robert Guenther.  "While we had a number of our produce priorities included in the original draft, there were still many problem areas in that version."

Since that time, United Fresh has worked closely with Committee members on both sides of the aisle and gained significant improvements in strengthening the bill’s commodity-specific approach to produce, eliminating its prescriptive dictates on traceability that could have blocked our current Produce Traceability Initiative, exempted produce from any duplicative requirements for country of origin labeling, enhanced the ability of fresh processors to develop individual HACCP programs, assured equal treatment of imported and domestic produce and capped registration fees for both facilities and importers, and more.

"Obviously, it's been a huge task working to improve the details of this 134-page bill, but there has been good progress.  We expect to continue working with congressional allies as this bill moves through the House, and the Senate takes up its own food safety bill, in order to pass sound, scientific food safety legislation," Guenther said.