by Jim Tankersley

Congressional negotiators have reached a deal on what supporters are calling the most far-reaching set of product-safety reforms in decades.

The agreement, announced this afternoon by a congressional conference committee, sets the stage for what is expected to be quick passage in the House and Senate and a signature from President Bush. Once law, the bill would mandate new federal safety testing for toys, including a strict standard for lead; create a searchable database of product complaints filed with the government for consumers to access; require manufacturers to make it easier for consumers to learn about recalled products; increase fines and other penalties for safety violations; and beef up the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission and its budget.

The House and Senate passed versions of the bill earlier this year. In the compromise measure, the stricter standards appear to have won out almost every time.

"It's a really strong, strong bill," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a longtime product-safety advocate who sat on the conference committee. "It really, in many ways, is the birth of a new agency that will have much broader authority particularly to keep our children safe."

Schakowsky and other lawmakers have credited the Chicago Tribune's reporting on recalls and toy safety dangers - in a series that won this year's Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting - with spurring many of the changes. Two other Illinois lawmakers - Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Bobby Rush, whose name is attached to the final legislation - played key roles pushing the bill through Congress.

Read on for a breakdown of the agreement's key provisions, per a Senate committee summary:

by Stephen J. Hedges

Call it the smoking jalapeno. After nearly two months of mystery, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has identified a jalepeno pepper that is contaminated with the same strain of Salmonella saintpaul that has sickened more than 1,237 people in 43 states.

It's the first time during this outbreak that a test has found the salmonella strain in a piece of produce.

The discovery, which will be announced shortly by FDA, was made at a packing plant in McAllen, Texas, according to a source familiar with the issue. The pepper was grown in Mexico, the source said, but was sent to the U.S. for sale. Authorities are not sure where it was contaminated with salmonella.

It is also not clear whether the same packing plant, which has not been named by the FDA, also packs tomatoes. The FDA first suspected tomatoes as the cause of the salmonella outbreak and warned consumers on June 7 to avoid certain types of tomatoes. It lifted that warning last week.

Because people continued to get sick after the tomato warning, the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shifted their investigation to jalapeno and Serrano peppers, which sick people had reported eating.

For the FDA, which was under public and political pressure to find the cause of the salmonella outbreak, the discovery of a smoking pepper is a big breakthrough.

by Stephen J. Hedges

The Government Accountability Office released an audit Monday suggesting at least six other countries and the European Union have better food safety systems than the United States.

The 97-page audit was requested by two of the most vocal food safety critics in Congress, Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, (D-Conn.).

Both have pressed for a single food safety agency instead of the dual system in the U.S. right now - the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulates most foods, while the Department of Agriculture is responsible for meat, poultry and egg safety.

"I hope today's report serves as a wake-up call for the Administration and others in Congress," Durbin said. "We need a thoughtful overhaul and reorganization of America's food safety system."

The audit examined how six countries, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the E.U., reorganized food safety systems to work more efficiently. The GAO found that those nations do things better by taking a "farm to table approach."

by Amanda Erickson

By the time the chairman asked staffs to stay at work during Congress' Fourth of July recess, it was clear the landmark consumer protection bill passed earlier this year was not close to being finalized.

The bill passed the House in December and the Senate in March. Since then, employees of key lawmakers have been trying to iron out the differences between the two pieces of legislation. For the last several weeks, they've been predicting that they would have a final bill by this Friday. But at today's conference meeting between House members and senators, it was clear that the bill was going nowhere by the end of the week. Most of the major unresolved questions remain, well, unresolved.

Will the final bill include a law to require the creation a public database which would publish concerns of consumers? The committee hasn't decided yet. The database would allow anyone to submit complaints and read what others have to say. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration already has a similar database for cars, but some worry that manufacturers' products will be unfairly blacklisted.

Another key issue is whether to include the Senate's ban on phthalates in the final bill. Phthalates are a chemical used in plastic toys like rubber duckies to make them soft and flexible. Some studies have linked the substance to health problems like birth defects and testicular cancer, but a handful law-makers said there isn't enough medical proof to warrant a blanket law.

Other hot-button issues? How much power attorneys general should have. What kind of protection should be afforded to whistle-blowers who let authorities know a company is up to no good. Whether companies should be protected by shield laws if their products hurt children.

Staffers will keep negotiating, and the committee will meet again after the Fourth of July. The list of deals that were reached (at least 20) was not yet released, but we'll update you when it comes out.

by Frank James

The just-passed farm bill, which is valued at $290 billion to $307 billion, depending on who's counting, is taking some heavy flak from the city slickers who comprise the editorial pages of some of the nation's largest newspapers. The biggest complaint? it subsidizes wealthy farmers and contains all kinds of goodies for the well-connected.

This is from the Washington Post:

The farm bill is the epitome of old-style Washington politics. A small number of farm-state senators from both parties demanded its most wasteful provisions, such as guaranteed payments to big cotton and rice growers and "disaster relief" for farmers in arid areas. These members of the less-representative body leveraged their right to filibuster into billions of dollars for people who are better off than the average taxpayer. The bill includes only the most tepid reforms, which, though trumpeted by the bill's advocates, deny benefits to only a tiny handful of farms.

This is from the Chicago Tribune:

Farmers are enjoying record high prices for crops. Farm income has risen 56 percent over the last two years.

Crop prices have been rising much faster than gasoline prices. (A gallon of unleaded gas in Chicago costs 35 percent more than it did two years ago.) High gas prices and record oil earnings prompted Capitol Hill hearings on price gouging and bills to limit oil industry tax breaks.

On April 23, 2008, a motorist fuels up at a San Mateo, Calif. gas station. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, file)

by Matthew Hay Brown

House Democrats are concluding their gas price-themed by calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate gasoline prices for possible market manipulation.

In a letter today, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and other senior Democrats called on Commission William E. Kovacic to exercise new investigative authority granted by Congress in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

"Congress provided this authority to the FTC four months ago - but to date, the FTC has failed to exercise its power to protect consumers from skyrocketing energy costs," they wrote. "Recent price volatility and investor speculation in the oil market require the diligent oversight Congress called for, especially when oil prices break records daily."

On Thursday, Pelosi urged President Bush to stop suspend deliveries to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. She also has called on Bush and congressional Republicans to work with Democrats to pass legislation to crack down on gasoline price gouging, hold OPEC accountable for price fixing and end tax breaks for oil companies and invest the savings in renewable energy.

The letter follows.

by Frank James

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke is testifying to the House Budget Committee at this hour.

Here's the money quote from his prepared statement which he essentially read word for word.

To be useful, a fiscal stimulus package should be implemented quickly and structured so that its effects on aggregate spending are felt as much as possible within the next twelve months or so. Stimulus that comes too late will not help support economic activity in the near term, and it could be actively destabilizing if it comes at a time when growth is already improving. Thus, fiscal measures that involve long lead times or result in additional economic activity only over a protracted period, whatever their intrinsic merits might be, will not provide stimulus when it is most needed. Any fiscal package should also be efficient, in the sense of maximizing the amount of near-term stimulus per dollar of increased federal expenditure or lost revenue. Finally, any program should be explicitly temporary, both to avoid unwanted stimulus beyond the near-term horizon and, importantly, to preclude an increase in the federal government's structural budget deficit.

What he's basically calling for is for the federal government to take steps to quickly put money in taxpayers' and consumers' pockets. That will have the biggest bang for the buck. He didn't say this but such steps could include a tax rebate to give taxpayer a few extra hundred dollars. Or it might include an extension of unemployment benefits.

By William Neikirk

Nancy Nord, embattled head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, came up with an unusual defense today for accepting free trips from the industry she regulates.

Her agency's budget is so limited, she said, that she'd rather take free travel and spend the rest of enforcement or research.

"Faced with limited enforcement dollars, I would much rather spend $900 in a laboratory than on an airline or hotel," she told a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Besides, she said, the practice of accepting free trips from industry has been an agency practice for more than 20 years and there was nothing inherently wrong with it--a statement that caused some members of the panel to bristle.

by Matthew Hay Brown

After a summer of toy recalls, the acting head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission is now the latest member of the Bush administration to stumble into the crosshairs of congressional Democrats.

A week after acting Chairwoman Nancy Nord told a Senate committee that a Democratic proposal to expand her agency "could have the unintended consequence of hampering, rather than furthering, consumer product safety," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called today for her resignation.

"Any commission chair who does not, in the face of the facts that are so clear, say we don’t need any more authority or any more resources to do our job, does not understand the gravity of the situation," Pelosi said.

Pelosi and other Democrats have criticized the administration’s response to the recalls last summer of Thomas the Tank Engine accessories and other toys tainted with lead paint.

"There is only one inspector charged with testing toys to make sure that they are safe for our children," Pelosi told reporters. "There are toys being sold in our stores now that are untested and unsafe."

by Frank James

How's this for a reaction to a newspaper investigation? Actually, it's probably more accurate to call it pre-action.

Even before the Tribune could run a scheduled investigative piece on a crib flaw that has killed several children, Simplicity, the manufacturer, is recalling one million of the cribs.

Here's how the Chicago Tribune website is reporting the situation:

In response to a Tribune investigation coming this weekend, the Consumer Product Safety Commission today announced it is recalling one million cribs made by Simplicity for a potentially deadly drop rail hazard. Three deaths have been linked to the flaw. The Tribune special report will detail how the company and the federal agency were slow to react to this danger.

by Steve Hedges

Sen. Dick Durbin has asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to explain how thoroughly it tests seafood from Asia, especially in light of the “import alert” the FDA has imposed on some seafood from China.

In a letter to FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach, Durbin, a Democrat, cites a Sept. 16 Tribune story headlined, “As FDA gets tough on China seafood, it fails to hold others to same standard.” The story details how popular seafood from other Asian countries continues to be imported without the safety restrictions placed on China.

Yet many of those Asian countries, the story reports, use the same fish-farming techniques -- and experience the same contamination problems -- as Chinese fisheries.

By Gabrielle Russon

Thomas Moore had an appointmenrt with his dentist today. But it came at an awkward time, just as the Consumer Products Safety commissioner was scheduled to attend a congressional hearing.

So after testifying for about six minutes, Moore headed out, leaving the commission’s acting chairwoman alone to fight off criticism that the agency wasn’t aggressive enough in stopping tainted Chinese-manufactured products from appearing on American shelves.

“Are you leaving?” Nancy Nord asked as Moore stood up to make his exit. “Can I come with you?”

A burst of laughter erupted from the audience, a sudden break from talk about lead-based paint, Chinese exports and Thomas the Tank Engine recalls.

“You’re facing your own dentist here,” a man told Nord.

“This is a sad day when you’d rather go to the dentist,” she shot back.

And then, without skipping a beat, the hearing continued.

Minus Moore, of course.