Interested in, will we have any musical entertainment . I can assure you if you do not come, your spouse will be saying i cannot believe you missed that. I am limited about what their agents will let us say. Contract. Nder a i can promise you this. We will have several entertainers that you will say wow, i cannot believe it got to be in a small group and listen with them. You can swing by the most visited National Park in the country or head west and go see memphis your room is our that elvis is still in the building at times. And on Good Authority that the king will be here tomorrow. You can sample some great to see products at our booth tomorrow. Every day in tennessee we make m ms. Illion minimu we also have some googoo clust ers. Makee is another product we that starts with jack. You and in gauging meeting. We realize the summer is a busy. Ime with promises will be informative and entertaining and one that you will not want to miss. Will beomise it informative and entertaining and one that you will not want to miss. I hope you got that you did say that elvis may be in the ring tomorrow. That will be exciting. You do not want to miss tomorrows session. We are concluding our open session. Governors, if youll please join us in the governors only session which will start at 12 45 p. M. You have a quick break and well see out of her governors in that session. Thank you very much. Of our governors in that session. Thank you very much. We will see all of our governors in that session. Thank you very much. We will have more live coverage at 3 00 eastern time today. States will be talking about their preparedness and response to natural disasters. We will have live coverage tomorrow starting with the Iowa Governor on washington journal. You will be taking your calls, emails and tweets starting at 7 30 a. M. Eastern. President of, the the Service EmployeesInternational Union will join us to discuss issues facing labor unions and workers. Then a recent human report accusing north korea and its leader of crimes against humanity. We will be talking with john park at the u. S. Institute of peace. It is live every morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern here on cspan. After, the interim president of the naacp will be our guest on newsmakers. She will be talking about increasing the minimum wage and efforts by president obama and republicans help africanamericans. That is run of the reasons i believe personally he was able to do the executive order for minimum wage. The efforts that had been going in washington and about nine other cities where they are talking about raising the minimum wage. That gave them emphasis to do what he did. One of the things you said earlier is that they are not in lockstep with the president. The complaints we have seen in the africanamerican not thinkas they do that president obama has put in enough focus on the Africanamerican Community during the time in office. Are in the second term, do you still think the atte house is looking america too widely and not focusing on the africanamerican unemployment issues that you and your organization specifically are interested in . They are looking much more strategically. I think the president realizes that the Africanamerican Community has been a bedrock of support. An absolute that rocked. I look at my own church. I think he is looking at a more strategically at how he can make an impact on the africanamerican communities both with employment, health care and all the kind of issues that we are facing every day. You saying the white house has not been doing this before . They have been. From ave been doing it much larger lens. Now that they are now or in the narrowing it focusing on strategic things, i think they feel that they can really make a difference. They see the met checks of it. They can go down certain areas. You watch the entire newsmakers tomorrow 10 00 a. M. And at 6 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan. The all new cspan. Org website is now mobile friendly. That means you can access our comprehensive coverage of politics, nonfiction books, american history, where you want, when you want, and how you want. It scales to fit any of your screens from the monitor of your desktop and peter to your laptop tablet or smart phone. Cspan livewatch coverage of washington. Check our Program Schedules or search our extensive Video Library whenever and wherever you want. The new cspan. Org makes it easy for you to keep an eye on what is happening in washington. Last week, the Farm Foundation hosted a discussion about whod saved the in implementing the 2010 food safety modernization act signed into law by president obama. It aims to prevent food or illnesses and recommended guidelines for improving domestic and foreign food. This is about two hours. Good morning. To our participants. While our audio cast audience cannot see the speakers this morning, they will see the powerpoint presentations and have an opportunity to participates by asking questions. The questions can be submitted at any time. This is made possible through a grant from the farm credit system. We ask that you come to the microphone, identify yourself, present your question, and proceed from there. Our topic this morning is implementing the food safety modernization act. Since the legislation was signed into law in 2010, the Food Drug Administration has been addressing the process of issuing final rules. Rules have been proposed in seven areas with comments closed. One maybe we reissue. Fda continues to work to the thousands of comments received. In fact, fda declined our invitation to participate in this forum, citing their heavy workload. The food safety modernization act shifts the focus of federal regulators to prevention of foodborne illnesses rather than simply responding to contamination. New regulations are proposed at the farm level. For some, Food Processing facilities and for food importers. We have a distinguished panel with us this morning, of those being affected by this new rule, or this new law come to discuss the impacts of this legislation. Opening our session this morning is christopher waldrop, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of america. His bio is in your hand out and available on the audio cast. Chris is going to provide some background on the act as well as consumer perspectives. Chris . Thanks, charlie, thanks for the farmed foundation for the invitation. Again my name is Chris Waldrop codirector of food policy. Cfa is a nonprofit consumer advocacy or decision founded in 1968 to advance the consumer interest of research, education and advocacy and we are made up of about 300 member Organizations National as a small state and local organizations all across the country. Since fd is not here today i will do a little background on fsma and talk about the context of how fsma came into being because i think thats important as were thinking about implementation. Cpcs at 49 americans are second every year from foodborne illness, 3000 won a 20,000 are hospitalized. The Economic Costs society of foodborne els elves have been estimated to be 77 billion per year in terms of lost wages, medical costs, time off of work and that sort of thing. In the years leading up to fsma consumer saw just a sort of steady stream of large nationwide foodborne illness outbreaks linked to common everyday foods that most consumers have in the house and consume on a regular basis, things like spinach, Peanut Butter, eggs, peppers, a number of other foods where consumers were seeing these outbreaks repeatedly and over and over again. In addition consumers were expressing concern about the safety of imported foods and the inability of fda to police the imports coming into this country. Fda can only expect about one to 2 of all imports into the u. S. In addition we were seeing Economic Cost of the Food Industry as well. So the 2006 e. Coli outbreak that was linked to spinach cost the leafy green entry 350 million, and kelloggs was broke and the pca Peanut Butter recall that was nationwide and caused kelloggs itself 75 million as a result of that recall. So there were some real Economic Costs to producers and processors of cracks in a food Safety System and a lead to declines Consumer Confidence both in terms of government as well as industry. And incidentally just last month a harris poll came out looking at consumer concerns and issues around food safety, and they found 73 of Consumers Want more oversight of the federal government around food safety issue. So clearly consumers expect the government to play a role in food safety and fsma was sort of the result of that and that 20062010 area. There were strong support for fsma by both consumer groups and the Food Industry. There were strong bipartisan support for the bill. Congress passed the bill with bipartisan support in 2010 and president obama then signed in early 2011. Now, the sort of key elements of fsma as charlie said, it fundamentally shifts fda approach from reaction to prevention because a huge shift and most of the components in fsma were guided and focused around that. Theres a new inspection mandate for fda that increases inspection frequency for both domestic and imported facilities. A requirement that food plants develop and implement preventive process controls to reduce contamination in food plants, requirement for the First Time Ever that standards for safe production of fresh fruits and vegetables on the farm. Required fda to develop systems to address important safety and a Better Safety of imported food and theres such a different element, the voluntary qualified Importer Program and Third Party Certification all kind of Work Together as well as working with foreign governments to develop, better ensure the import of food to push back towards the country that are exporting to the u. S. It requires enhanced traceability high risk Food Products come enhanced surveillance of foodborne illness outbreaks and better cooperation between fda and other Government Agencies including state and local agencies, provides fda with a 30 to set standards to reduce pathogen and then provides a day with mandatory recall authority. Those are sort of the fundamental and key elements of fsma. In addition to was that test the tester amendment which provided exemptions for certain Small Businesses that market the majority of their food to it directly to consumers or to certain restaurant and Retail Companies within a particular radius and that exempted these forms are these facilities from safety regulations. It provides, requires facilities to adopt modified preventive controls or to demonstrate document compliance with state and local, and for the farmed it requires the farms to label or have some sort of signage, Contact Information for the farm when they are selling the products. Now as charlie mentioned, all seven of the major proposals have been released. You can see them here. The first four, the Public Comment period has close although fda is going to reopen the Public Comment period for certain key provisions of the preventive controls and approaches the safety rules that were particularly controversial or fda want to sort of take a second attempt at them. And get additional comments and kind of see what they can do. The last three are still open to build the additional provisions like traceability, performance standards that will come later. Fda also has to define sort of how theyre going to fight high risk food for certain at this provision. They released the methodology on that and will begin develop in the list at some point in the future. The other thing to know about implementation is fda is now under a court order to publish all the final rules by june 2015, so the clock is ticking on this and fda is needing to work very hard to make sure theyre reading all the comments, incorporating all the changes, repurposing the key provisions and finalizing these rules by 2015. So just in my remaining few minutes i want to highlight a few consumer concerns, consumer issues would like to see in terms of changes to these rules. Consumers, groups of jelly want to make sure that fda is something fsma in a timely way and consistent with the law and make sure that adequate protections for consumers but we generally have supported the rules that have come out so far weve commented on by the are some key areas we would like to see change. In terms of preventive control, fda did not record the companys to implement either environmental or finished product testing other products. That was not a requirement in the rule, neither did it get require food manufacturers to develop and maintain a supply of Verification Program. Both of these things are best practices in Food Industry today. They are, practices and we think fda needs to restore those elements into a final rule so that it is a requirement for testing and a requirement for supplier for vacation program. On the produce side, cfa supported fdas approach to regulate risky practices as opposed to risky products. So the practices that are going into the product in terms of worker hygiene, soil and menace, water, that sort of thing, but fda did carve out an exemption for certain products that they defined is rarely consumed raw. And we dont think that that is an appropriate exception. We think a lot of the products on the list actual our consumed raw by consumers, and that the crosscontamination issue that can occur in the kitchen if some of those products, with pathogen. We would like to see that exemption closed. We do support some sort of numerical standard for Water Testing to be able to have some determination that the water thats being used has met Safety Standards to fda is going to we propose that so were looking for commenting and see what that is proposal is similar for two that. We do think fda should require some sort of Environmental Testing in packing shed. This was particularly highlighted in the wisteria outbreak in 2011th link to cantaloupes weather was with us to contamination in that packing shed. Had he been testing for that they may been able to find and avoid an outbreak of those deaths and illnesses. Fda get require importers to develop and verify that their suppliers are producing food safety. The agency gave importers to options. One is an annual onsite audit of their suppliers any other sort of a range of options, a menu of options. We believe in annual onsite audit is essential so that the importer has some assurance on an annual basis that their supplier is producing safe food, providing them with safe food and not just doing a paperwork check so that they are on seconds he was going on and maintain a relationship with their suppliers. And finally Third Party Certification program, this is a new area for fda, sort of uncharted territory for the agency although they tried to align what to do with some of things that are of enough that are out there now. Third Party Certification programs has been hurt by things like jensen forms npca and Wright County as where Third Party Auditors went into these farms are these facilities, gave them very high marks and then weeks or months later there was a huge nationwide outbreak that sickened hundreds of consumers. So conference in the systems isnt high. So for fda to build to incorporate those they need to ensure that the adequate transparency which includes things like providing the public with robust information about the entities involved, selfassessment reports, audit reports, unannounced audits and be an important part of that element as well and then adequate oversight of program, making sure fda has a good sense of whats going on with the different entities that are performing these certifications so they can oversee that program and not just set it up, let it run and never Pay Attention to it again. Those are just a few o of the areas where cfa has raised concerns and wants to see some changes. Im sure well get into more detail in the commentary to look forward to that, and thank you very much for the time it. Thank you, chris. [applause] next we welcome to the podium richard gilmore, ceo of gci trade in incorporated and founder of the Global Food Safety Forum which develop Publicprivate Partnership risk minimization. Food Safety Strategies in asian markets in a global food chain. Rick is going discuss the legislation issues related to food importers. Good morning, everyone. So, fsma is really, we regard fsma in the International Perspective as a catalyst for change, both in the u. S. Context but also globally. And our focus in Global Food Safety Forum has been the asian markets with prime attention in china where we have an office and are act