Big Update on H.R. 2749 Posted by Tim at 07/27/09 02:39 PM

The House is starting its last week of work before the August Recess, and the Majority Leader’s website shows H.R. 2749 (Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009) as the last item on the suspension calendar. Under House rules, bills may be taken up under suspension of the rules Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Therefore the Weekly Leader indicates that H.R. 2749 could come up either as the last bill of the day on Tuesday or the last bill under suspensions on Wednesday.

To pass under suspension of the rules, a bill must receive the support of 2/3rds of the members voting, a quorum being present. A quorum for purposes of suspensions is 218. If all members are present and voting, we will need 290 YEAs to pass the bill.

This is encouraging, but this does not guarantee that they will get to the vote, or that it will pass. Congress needs to keep hearing from you!

In the meantime there is a lot of closed door wheeling and dealing going on- some concessions may be good, some maybe bad. Make sure to write or call your Congressman today (again) and tell them to: Support a YES vote for the food safety bill, HR 2749--with no weakening amendments--before they go home in August.

Click here to take our online action.

comments (3)

1 Posted by Rodrigo Olea at 07/28/09 02:10 PM

VOTE NO ON HR2749! This legislation will give unprecedented power to the FDA which is now being run by Michael Taylor an ex Monsanto executive. Do you honestly trust him? No way! This law is unfair on small family owned businesses putting them all in the same category as the giant agribusiness operations! VOTE NO!

2 Posted by Kim at 07/28/09 03:03 PM

I would like to point out about cookie dough, however, that it says ON the package that raw ingredients are part of the product and should be cooked before consuming. Common sense people!! The peanut butter dbacle though is appalling to me! Its on the scale of such recent scandals such that deviants like Bernie Madoff perpetrated upon a trusting and gullible public. Read "Diet for New America". See what is really happening in slaughterhouses. You may not want to eat meat again! Or at the very least take another look at free range beef/chicken and your local, neighborhood health food store. (FYI, I am not affiliated with or employed by any health food stores, organic manufacturers, etc. I just attempt in this comforming, conservative pop culture to read, think, and act "outside the box".) Thanks!

3 Posted by James Hare at 07/28/09 06:56 PM

This 'Food Safety bill demands open discussion, not backroom wheeling and dealing... this sort of law making grinds up small producers and processors. Bigness is translated into advantage, not because it is safer, but because they can write the rules to favor them. For instance a $500 fee would be of no consequence to Golden Plump, but a big tax on a family processing a few hundred chickens a year... result? Fewer options for people seeking local, humanely raised, chicken without arsenic. The examples are endless. Why on gods green earth would the CU be okay with the Grocery Manufacturers writing any part of this bill? With a voice vote?