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After a recent spate of food borne illnesses and deaths, several lawmakers are pushing for Congress to create a new food safety agency.

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., has introduced the Food Safety Act of 2007, which would require one federal department, instead of the current 12, to oversee food safety. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has introduced a companion bill in the Senate.

The new agency, called the Food Safety Administration, would be the first of its kind and should eliminate or reduce the duplication of food safety responsibilities, the two lawmakers said. Currently there are more than 30 laws governing food safety by the dozen federal agencies.

"Our current food safety system has turned into a food fight among dozens of federal agencies," Durbin said in a news release.

While recent food safety concerns show the system needs improvement, creating one agency is not the solution, said Kelli Ludlum, policy specialist for American Farm Bureau. Such a move could create more problems than it solves, she said.

"We have some real concerns just based on what we’ve seen with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, for example, that this would be very disruptive to the existing food safety system and could create gaping holes in the food safety system," she said.

The two agencies that have the biggest food safety responsibilities are the U.S Department of Agriculture, which oversees meat, poultry and egg products, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which oversees most other food products. The USDA said the Food Safety Administration isn’t needed because the USDA works well with the FDA on stopping food-borne illnesses.

Instead of creating one agency, Congress should allocate more money to USDA and FDA so there can be sufficient funding for inspectors and enforcement of the rules, Ludlum said.

"We don’t think that moving the authorities or simply moving people out of an agency and into another will really solve any of those problems. In fact, we think it probably is more disruptive to the system," she said.

AFBF also supports additional funding for food safety research, Ludlum said.

"We know that with scientific research we can always find advances in technology and techniques that will help keep food safe all the way from the producer to the processor to the supermarket," she said.

The Safe Food Act has been referred to the ag committees in the House and Senate with no scheduled committee votes.