All the pieces are in place for Senate passage of major food safety legislation that would give the Food and Drug Administration new powers to police both home grown and imported foods. “[I]t is urgent that that FDA food safety legislation, which could improve the safety of 80 percent of the food supply, not get pushed behind other pressing issues that are less likely to garner bipartisan support,” Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, writes in an op-ed for The Hill.

The bill, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510), developed in a bipartisan environment, DeWaal writes:

Amid the rancorous partisanship that has marked the past year in the nation’s capital, a bipartisan effort to pass food safety legislation has been quietly taking shape. While the healthcare negotiations have broken down, restarted, and now seem to be in limbo, efforts quiet but sure to upgrade the Food and Drug Administration’s food safety mandate are progressing steadily. The last push for Senate action is near. And that effort is evidence that Washington can sometimes work, albeit slowly. 

Seven of the bill’s 15 cosponsors are Republicans, DeWaal notes. A similar bill enjoyed bipartisan support in the House where it passed last July, 283 to 142.

I’m less than sanguine about quick passage in the Senate – a body that seems to revel in slackery and incompetence. The food safety bill has been good to go since November when it passed the Senate health committee. What’s a bipartisan bill have to do to get some floor action in this town?

Nonetheless, the bill should remain a high priority for two reasons, as DeWaal argues. First, the bill would improve the safety of the food supply by allowing the agency to order mandatory recalls of tainted food products (a power it does not currently possess) and implement a program to collect fees from certain food facilities to fund increased safety inspections, among other provisions. Second, it would serve as evidence that government works to protect the public (and that government works period).

The latter is no small achievement. According to a recent CNN poll, 83 percent of Americans think our government is broken. According to a different poll, a majority of Americans think government has grown so large that “it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.”

Ensuring the safety and integrity of the food supply is an example of government intervention that aids, not threatens. Considering voter frustration with government’s role in society – which I believe stems in large part from the political morass that has bogged down health care reform and economic stimulus – now is an opportune time to highlight what government can do well.