NCL’s Ongoing Role in Food Safety Reform

Protecting the safety of our food supply is vital. Failure to do so could have disastrous consequences—leading to product recalls; food shortages; worsening hunger; and, in some cases, consumer illness or death. It has been one of my greatest priorities throughout my time in Congress, and in looking for a partner in this ongoing effort to strengthen our food safety systems, it only made sense for me to work with an organization that has been doing this, and doing it very successfully, for a very long time. I am proud to call the National Consumers League (NCL), a true and trusted partner in our fight to protect consumers and our nation’s food supply.

Food safety has been a central pillar of NCL’s work throughout its 125-year history. At the beginning of the 20th century, during President Theodore Roosevelt’s Administration in 1906, NCL played a critical role in the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drugs Act, a historically important effort to address the unsanitary food production practices of that time and protect consumer health. During that era, NCL was an influential voice in encouraging consumers to buy products made in safe factories where workers were paid and treated well.

And in the decades that followed, NCL was at the forefront of a wide range of food safety issues, from demanding adequate testing of food additives to barring insufficient and misleading labeling.

The clear and compelling voice of the NCL is needed on this issue now more than ever before. Today, one in every six Americans gets sick at some point in the year because of something they ate or drank. Three thousand people die annually, and another 128,000 are hospitalized because of foodborne illnesses. We can do better than this, but we are kept from doing so by an ineffective, fragmented food safety regulatory structure that does an inadequate job of protecting the public.

For years, Senator Dick Durbin and I have been sponsoring legislation that would streamline our current food safety system—in which 16 different agencies administer at least 30 laws regarding food—into a single, independent agency that would be in charge of all inspections, labeling, and enforcement, and would have the resources and the authority to rapidly identify and contain outbreaks of food-related disease.

NCL has been a strong and consistent supporter of this legislation and a valuable partner in advocating the reforms that will help this country avoid the kind of problems we have seen all too recently, such as, contaminated baby formula and formula shortages.

On that issue, many of us in Congress have applauded the clear vision that NCL has shared with the American public. In response to the 2022 infant formula shortage and a report from a credible whistleblower to my office, I insisted that a full investigation of the factory that produced the contaminated formula take place, that we incentivize more companies to produce infant formula so a small handful of corporations aren’t dominating the market (I have recently introduced legislation to advance this concept), and that the single food safety agency we are advocating for include a baby formula safety and supply chain expert. I appreciate Sally Greenberg and her staff for their steadfast support in this fight.

Change is never easy, especially when too many corporate interests find it advantageous to keep the status quo in place. But we have strong and capable allies on our side in this fight to ensure that the food in our refrigerators and pantries is safe. NCL has been at this for 125 years and has won a lot of major victories during that time. I have no doubt that more wins for consumers are on the horizon, thanks in large part to NCL’s hard work.

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U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro has served Connecticut’s Third Congressional District since 1991. She is the Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee.