Sneak Play on Food Safety

While dinner table conversations across the country focus on how Florida ought to tally its presidential vote, another states’ rights issue is working its way through Congress, one that could have a more direct effect on dinner plates.

Over the congressional recess, legislators have been working to attach to a must-pass spending bill an amendment that would essentially override all state food safety laws that are more stringent than federal ones. A California law that requires warning of toxic exposure is a prime target of the measure.

President Clinton should firmly promise to veto the labor and Health and Human Services appropriations bill if it contains the amendment, which would deprive states of the ability to protect consumers in matters where the Food and Drug Administration is weak.

For example, earlier this year the FDA concluded that the dietary supplement ephedra, a stimulant, has been responsible for hundreds of serious illnesses and at least 17 deaths. A law passed by Congress in 1994 prohibits the FDA from regulating dietary supplements, but states including New Jersey and Texas have rightly moved to ban ephedra sales to one group at particular risk--children.

The amendment, S 1155, has been railroaded through Congress without a single hearing or the public accountability of a floor vote in either chamber. Attempting to federalize all food safety decisions in secret is about as undemocratic as Congress gets, but such haste and disregard are often hallmarks of late-in-the-day amendments backed by special interests.

The real target of S 1155 is Proposition 65, a measure that California voters passed in 1986 to require warnings on products that contain cancer-causing agents or substances that damage the reproductive system. Proposition 65 actions in the late 1980s and early ‘90s forced manufacturers to take carcinogens out of faucet joints, antacid tablets, fine china, vinyl mini-blinds and Liquid Paper, among other things.

Brian Folkerts, vice president of government affairs for the National Food Processors Assn., a backer of the disputed amendment, says that it would eliminate the “considerable confusion” caused when “one state imposes a warning requirement not adopted by other states.” But Folkerts hasn’t produced any evidence of such confusion.

Rather, the measure has worked more subtly as a deterrent. Repeatedly in the last decade, food product manufacturers have decided to remove materials like lead in calcium supplements and food cans rather than add label warnings. And because California is such a large market, whatever companies do here they are likely to do nationwide.

A report issued in July by Congress’ own investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, concluded that consumers may be exposed to potentially unsafe ingredients because the FDA has never issued safety standards for dietary supplements. Some states have served their citizens well by fixing such lapses, and they should not be deprived of that power.