U.S. Plans to Streamline Rules on Food Hazards

Moving to ease consumer concerns over food safety, President Bush is preparing to announce a streamlining of regulations so that dangerous chemicals can be taken off the market more quickly, sources said Wednesday.

The Administration’s new policy for dealing with pesticides and other chemicals in foods is aimed at giving the Environmental Protection Agency greater flexibility in dealing with food safety issues.

EPA Administrator William K. Reilly declined on Wednesday to provide details of the impending policy announcement, but told reporters “it’s responsive to a number of problems this agency has had in administering our pesticide law.”

The President is expected to announce the food safety initiative at the White House today.

Industry spokesmen reserved comment on the new policy until it is announced. Environmentalists said that while they welcome some aspects of the new policy, they have concerns about other provisions.

According to sources familiar with the revision, it will include a shift in the procedures used by the EPA in determining whether a potentially dangerous pesticide should be taken off the market. The EPA no longer will be required to have a formal judicial hearing and may opt for a swifter rule-making process that could significantly reduce the time it takes to ban a chemical.

Environmentalists said that such a shift could reduce the time it takes to get a dangerous pesticide off the market from as long as eight years under current procedures to about two years.

If risks warrant, the EPA also will be given greater leeway in suspending use of pesticides and other chemicals used on foods while the formal proceedings get under way, the sources said. The agency will no longer have to prove an “imminent hazard” to public health to suspend a chemical, as is required under current policy. In some cases, the agency will not have to take into account economic ramifications of its action in suspending a chemical.

The EPA has been under attack from environmentalists for failing to act swiftly to protect the country’s food supply from dangerous levels of pesticide residues--including carcinogens--in foods, especially on fruits and vegetables.

The issue gained widespread attention earlier this year when EPA officials acknowledged that daminozide, a growth-regulating compound marketed under the name Alar, caused cancer, but were unable to take it off the market immediately because the agency did not believe it met the “imminent hazard” standard.

A public outcry over the use of Alar on apples subsequently caused its manufacturer to voluntarily stop selling the chemical.

The maker of another widely used chemical, the fungicide EBDC, recently announced it was stopping sale of the compound for use on a variety of food crops, but continued to make it available for use on many other fruits and vegetables.