Editorial: Don’t undermine food safety

Monday, March 6, 2006 | 7:32 a.m.

This week the House is expected to vote on legislation that would pre-empt state laws and regulations regarding food safety and packaging requirements. Critics of the legislation (H.R. 4167) say that mandating uniformity on warning labels, for instance, would mean that individual states could no longer issue their own requirements.

But members of Congress who are pushing the legislation, which is being supported in part by food manufacturers and supermarket chains, contend that the same level of food safety should exist everywhere.

"Consumers across the country deserve a single set of science-based food warning requirements, not the confusing patchwork that we have today," Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., says. That would be a totally sensible position - if we could trust the federal government and in turn the Food and Drug Administration to be aggressive enough in looking out for consumers by the establishment and vigilant regulation of food safety standards.

But when the FDA isn't taking the lead in setting tough standards, including labels on food items that clearly spell out the benefits and downsides of ingredients, then it falls to the states to pick up the slack.

Thirty-six state attorneys general, including Nevada's, and state food safety officials oppose this for a number of thoughtful reasons. The National Association of Attorneys General, in a March 1 letter to members of Congress, notes that essential consumer warnings, such as the mercury content in fish and arsenic in drinking water, would be done away with if this legislation passed.

The attorneys general also remind members of Congress that roughly 80 percent of food safety regulation is done by state and local agencies - not by the federal government.

"There is nothing in the public record showing that federal uniformity in this area provides a greater level of protection to consumers or is in the public interest," the attorneys general warn Congress in the letter. "Indeed, although this bill would radically change the traditional allocation of power between the states and the federal government, it has never been the subject of public hearings."

Congress should heed the persuasive arguments made by the states' top law enforcement officials and stop this attempt to ram through this legislation without adequate hearings. We need to be moving ahead, not backward, in informing the American people what it is that they are actually eating.