A Senate bill that would make the FDA accountable for errors in food recalls has a good chance of passing by Memorial Day, American Farm Bureau specialist Kelli Ludlum said Monday.
Ludlum spoke to Kansas Farm Bureau members in Washington about the food safety issues working their way through Congress.
The need for accountability was underscored in last summer's E. coli outbreak, initially blamed on tomatoes, she said.
"We had FDA telling people not to eat tomatoes. You couldn't get tomatoes on your sandwich at a restaurant or fresh salsa," she said. "Then it turns out the real culprit was peppers."
The problem for tomato growers was that the issue arose at the start of fresh tomato season, and eventually they were left with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tomatoes they could not sell.