WASHINGTON NEWS IN BRIEF: Pryor pushes food safety in lame-duck assembly

WASHINGTON — While much of the past week’s lameduck session of Congress focused on the election of new leaders and the orientation of new members, some legislative business did take place.

Among the bills moving forward was a food-safety measure that Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor sought to amend.Senators voted to allow the measure to proceed, and a final vote could come when members return after Thanksgiving.

The bill would give the Food and Drug Administration more authority to recall tainted products, increase inspections of food processors and require producers to follow stricter standards for keeping food safe. Operators of smaller farms and advocates for locally produced food have worried that the bill’s requirements could force small farms out of business.

“This is a very big Arkansas issue,” Pryor said. “Obviously, we produce a lot of food in our state.”

Pryor hopes to include a trio of provisions, including establishing an FDA task force to investigate suspected cases of food fraud, such as intentionally mislabeling or adulterating a food product.

A separate amendment would establish an FDA program to assess the health and safety implications of nanotechnology used in food and color additives, nutritional supplements, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and cosmetics. Existing FDA facilities, such as the National Center for Toxicological Research in the Jefferson County town of Jefferson, Ark., could conduct the kind of studies required under Pryor’s amendment.

In addition, Pryor wants to include an amendment calling on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fulfill requirements under the farm bill to issue regulations for grading and inspecting catfish, foreign and domestic, a provision that has not been met nearly a year after its deadline.

Pryor considered safety issues of another kind during a pair of hearings on transportation security issues.

On Tuesday, Transportation Security Administrator John Pistole and U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan Bersin testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee about air-cargo security in the wake of a bomb-plot uncovered last month by U.S. security and intelligence agencies and their international partners.

While Pryor noted that the potential attack had been thwarted, he said there remains room for improvement, particularly in terms of the procedures for screening the cargo aboard airplanes.

“When you go through something like this, you see that we still have some gaps in our security,” he said.

Pryor also heard from Pistole at a hearing Wednesday focused on Transportation Security Administration’s use of body scanners and full-body pat-downs that some airline passengers have said are too invasive.

Pryor, who said he has gone through a full-body scan but not a pat-down, said the agency has “not really” found the right balance yet between ensuring security and protecting privacy and civil liberties.

The safety of air cargo also was on the mind of Democratic Rep. Mike Ross, who recently led a bipartisan U.S. delegation to Poland for the 56th annual session of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Parliamentary Assembly.

At the meeting - held in Warsaw from Nov. 12-15 - Ross was elected vice president by delegates at the annual session, comprising 260 members of parliament from 48 countries, including all 28 NATO-member countries. Ross is the only U.S.

official with the assembly’s leadership team, which consists of a president, five vice presidents, treasurer and secretary general.

Ross, who is a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, was first appointed in 2005 to represent the United States to the NATO assembly, an organization of legislators from the 28 member countries of NATO and its 14 associate countries. Republican Sen.-elect John Boozman also has been a member.

Delegates, meeting the Polish Parliament, focused on the NATO mission in Afghanistan as well as its partnership with Afghan national security forces. Other topics included nuclear weapons, relations with Russia and Poland, and the future of NATO.

“The recent attempted terrorist attacks through cargo on commercial and freight airlines demonstrated that we must continue to work with our allies to combat terrorism and keep Americans safe,” Ross said. “America simply cannot carry the burden of fighting terrorism alone.”

Arkansas now has the highest rate of households facing “food insecurity” in the nation, according to an annual U.S. Department of Agriculture study released Monday.

The latest USDA report, on Household Food Security in 2009, found Arkansas with the highest percentage of households - nearly 1 in 5 - that are food insecure, meaning their access to adequate food was limited by lack of money and other resources. That was up from a year earlier when Arkansas had the third-highest rate of households that, at some time during the year, had difficulty putting enough food on the table because of a lack of resources.

The report found 17.7 percent of Arkansas households are food insecure. And 6.4 percent of Arkansas households are very food insecure, meaning the food intake of one or more household members was reduced and their eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because the household lacked money and other resources for food.

The USDA report came on the heels of a separate survey earlier this year by Feeding America, an anti-hunger advocacy group, which found Arkansas with the highest prevalence of children facing food insecurity.

The rate of Arkansas families facing a potential shortage of food has been steadily increasing, based on multi year averages. Using 1996-98 data, 13.7 percent of Arkansans were food insecure, a tie for seventh-highest with the District of Columbia. From 2003-05, the number climbed to 14.7 percent, moving Arkansas to the fifth-highest level. And for the 2006-08 period, the level was third-highest in the nation at 15.9 percent.

Nationally, the latest USDA survey found 14.7 percent of American households were food insecure at least sometime during the year, including 5.7 percent with very low food security. Those figures continue to represent the highest level of Americans who lack dependable accessto food since the USDA surveys began in 1995.

The full report can be viewed at USDA’s food-security website at www.ers. usda.gov/Briefing/Food-Security.