By Missy Ryan

WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers have filed a flurry of proposals this year aiming to fix the country's flawed food safety system, but champions of reform will have to wait for plans to become reality.

"The message is pretty consistent: we need more food inspection, we need more resources to do it, we need in some way to consolidate or create a more uniform and consistent approach," said Joe Mendelson, legal director at the Center for Food Safety, an advocacy group.

"There's a lot of consensus on the need to tackle these things, but not necessarily on the way to do it," he said.

In recent months, lawmakers in the House of Representatives and Senate have put forward at least a dozen proposals that seek to head off a fresh spate of scares related to imported and U.S.-made food.

Consumers were horrified in recent months to see spinach and beef patties tainted with E. coli, peanut butter and pot pies marred with Salmonella, and pet food laced with melamine sicken or kill people and pets across the country.

Some of the bills filed to date would tinker with the existing U.S. food safety system, which evolved in hodgepodge fashion over decades, and now stretches across multiple agencies that are strained and understaffed.

Inspection budgets at the Food and Drug Administration, responsible for almost half a trillion dollars in processed foods, fruits and vegetables, have decreased, leading to what an FDA advisory board recently called an "appallingly low" rate of food inspection.

The Agriculture Department inspects other food, like meat products and eggs.

Other plans now that have been floated in the Democratic-controlled Congress would introduce a fee on imported goods to fund greater inspections or take steps to trace problems down the production chain. Some lawmakers want to level the current system and start anew.

According to an analysis by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit group, parallel proposals from Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, two Democrats who have been vocal advocates on the issue, contain the most comprehensive reform.

The omnibus agriculture law being written this year could be another vehicle for at least some reform.

Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, the Agriculture Committee chairman, "believes that we have come to a point now where something needs to be done to shake things up in order to get to where we need to be," a press aide said.

Just this week, Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, and Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, introduced a bill that would crack down on food and farm goods smuggled into the United States.

EVENT-DRIVEN LAWMAKING?

Yet many believe it could take another catastrophe -- more deaths, illnesses, recalls -- to go beyond the spate of hearings and bills and see deep reform enacted.

Not only does Congress face pressing issues like funding the Iraq war and energy policy, but some fear desire for food safety reform could be overtaken in 2008 by election-year politics ahead of November's presidential vote.

"The problems are really too serious to be put on the back burner that way," said Jean Halloran, director of food policy issues at Consumers Union.

The myriad bills come as the Bush administration moves ahead with its own reform initiative, headed by Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, chair of a senior working group that has promised to improve information sharing, introduce new technologies and leverage foreign governments and private companies to bring Americans safe food.

The proposal, though, was widely panned as timid and inadequate. Leavitt has promised to put teeth on existing rules; details on pledges to increase budgets remain unclear.

Halloran believes that, only a few weeks before the Christmas holiday, legislation on the safety of other imported goods, like toys, could outpace steps on food safety reform.

This year marked the recall of millions of toys after some goods were found to contain unsafe levels of lead or be plagued by other defects that could endanger children.

Consumers Union is one group that wants to see a single food safety agency, something that many within government see as an unpalatable "nuclear" option.

"As a practical matter, that may be beyond what Congress can take on in next six months or so," Halloran acknowledged. (Editing by Christian Wiessner)

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