To provide for enhanced foodborne illness surveillance and food safety capacity, to establish regional food safety centers of excellence, and for other purposes.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR (for herself, Mr. CHAMBLISS, and Mr. DURBIN) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
To provide for enhanced foodborne illness surveillance and food safety capacity, to establish regional food safety centers of excellence, and for other purposes.
(a) In General-
(1) AUTHORITY- The Secretary of Health and Human Services (referred to in this Act as the ‘Secretary’) shall strengthen and expand foodborne illness surveillance systems to--
(A) inform and evaluate efforts to prevent foodborne illness; and
(B) enhance the identification and investigation of, and response to, foodborne illness outbreaks.
(2) FOODBORNE ILLNESS OUTBREAK- For purposes of this section, the term ‘foodborne illness outbreak’ means the occurrence of cases of human illness caused by a specific pathogen with matching subtype characteristics which are--
(A) found in 2 or more States; and
(B) temporally and geographically distributed in a manner to suggest contamination of a commercially distributed food product or ingredient.
(b) Foodborne Illness Surveillance Systems- The Secretary, acting through the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shall enhance foodborne illness surveillance systems to improve the collection, analysis, reporting, and usefulness of data on foodborne illnesses by--
(1) coordinating foodborne illness surveillance and environmental assessment systems, including complaint systems, in order to--
(A) produce better information on illnesses associated with foods, including sources and risk factors for infections by emerging pathogens; and
(B) facilitate sharing of data acquisition and findings on a more timely basis--
(i) among governmental agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Food Safety and Inspection Service, and State and local agencies;
(ii) with relevant persons in the food industry; and
(iii) with the public;
(2) augmenting foodborne illness surveillance and environmental assessment systems to improve--
(A) attribution of a foodborne illness outbreak to a specific food or food ingredient; and
(B) identification and reporting of contributing factors and environmental antecedents in foodborne illness outbreak investigations;
(3) developing improved epidemiological tools and methods for obtaining quality exposure data, microbiological methods for classifying cases and detecting clusters;
(4) developing improved environmental assessment tools for obtaining data on contributing factors and environmental antecedents in foodborne illness outbreaks;
(5) expanding capacity of foodborne illness surveillance and environmental assessment systems, including those owned and controlled by persons in industry, for implementation of fingerprinting strategies for foodborne infectious agents, including parasites and hepatitis A, in order to increase pathogen discovery efforts to identify new or rarely documented causes of foodborne illness;
(6) allowing timely industry and public access to de-identified, aggregate surveillance data;
(7) at least annually, publishing current reports on findings from foodborne illness surveillance and environmental assessment systems;
(8) exploring establishment of registries for long-term case follow-up to better characterize late complications of foodborne illness;
(9) increasing the participation of public health officials at the Federal, State, and local levels in national networks of public health and food regulatory agencies and laboratories to--
(A) share and accept laboratory analytic and environmental assessment findings; and
(B) identify foodborne illness outbreaks and attribute such outbreaks to specific foods through submission of standardized molecular subtypes (also known as ‘fingerprints’) of foodborne illness pathogens to a centralized database; and
(10) establishing a flexible mechanism for rapidly supporting scientific research by academic centers of excellence, which may include staff representing academic clinical researchers, food microbiologists, animal and plant disease specialists, ecologists, and other allied disciplines.
(c) Improving State Surveillance Capacity- The Secretary, acting through the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, shall improve capacity for surveillance in the States by--
(1) supporting outbreak investigations with needed specialty expertise, including epidemiological, microbiological, and environmental expertise, to assist identification of underlying common sources and contributing factors;
(2) identifying, disseminating, and supporting implementation of model practices at the State and local level for--
(A) facilitating rapid shipment of clinical isolates from clinical laboratories to State public health laboratories to avoid delays in testing;
(B) conducting rapid and standardized interviewing of individuals associated with major enteric pathogens, including prior to designation of clusters as foodborne illness outbreaks;
(C) conducting and evaluating rapid and standardized interviews of healthy control persons;
(D) providing environmental assessment tools for obtaining data regarding contributing factors and environmental antecedents during foodborne illness outbreak investigations; and
(E) sharing information on a timely basis--
(i) within public health and food regulatory agencies;
(ii) among such agencies;
(iii) with the food industry;
(iv) with healthcare providers; and
(v) with the public;
(3) conducting a systematic review of the barriers to sharing data among the entities described in paragraph (2)(E);
(4) developing, regularly updating, and disseminating training curricula on foodborne illness surveillance investigations, including standard sampling methods and laboratory procedures and improved environmental assessment procedures;
(5) integrating new molecular diagnostic tools for parasites into Web-based consultation services for parasitic infections to accelerate the identification of foodborne infectious agents;
(6) supporting research to develop and deploy new subtyping methods for salmonella, E. coli, campylobacter, and other pathogens, to increase the speed and accuracy of diagnoses;
(7) determining minimum core competencies for public health laboratories, and developing self-evaluation and proficiency-testing tools for such laboratories;
(8) facilitating regional public health laboratory partnerships to leverage resources, including equipment and physical space, and increase surge capacity;
(9) providing technical assistance, which may include the detailing of officers and employees of the Secretary, to State and local public health and food regulatory agencies;
(10) partnering with the Food and Drug Administration to increase communication, coordination, and integration of foodborne illness surveillance and outbreak investigation activities; and
(11) developing and periodically updating response and interview procedures so that such procedures are standardized and tested.