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EDITORIAL: A Bad Taste: North Carolina's Junior Senator Wants to Scrap State Food Safety Rules for Federal Oversight. His Legislation is Ill-Conceived

Posted on: Sunday, 11 June 2006, 15:00 CDT

By The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

Jun. 11--Maybe the timing was all wrong for a bill, first offered by North Carolina's U.S. Sen. Richard Burr while he was in the House, that would set the same food labeling and inspections standards in Dunn as in Des Moines. Or maybe there is an epidemic of illnesses caused by weak state food laws, but it's below the public's radar, as well as the radar of most state inspections agencies.

Maybe. More likely, Burr's bill is a solution stubbornly looking for a public-interest problem. Congress certainly has more important issues to address than Burr's business-friendly National Uniformity for Food Act.

The Tar Heel Republican says food companies shouldn't have to worry about complying with a number of different state rules on labeling and inspections. The point of state food regulations, of course, is to protect consumers from disease and death, not to make it easier for companies to operate. And Burr hasn't yet made a case that state rules unduly burden companies or push the cost of products out of the reach of Americans.

If passed in the Senate (the House approved it earlier this year), the bill would wipe out some state laws on food safety and labeling. Federal standards would take their place. How the legislation would affect state inspection laws isn't completely clear, but that's a warning sign in itself. In some cases, a particular food not covered by the federal guidelines wouldn't be regulated at all. If that's progress, a tuna salad sandwich left out in the summer sun is health food.

There are other substantive concerns. Many foods are regional, and local regulations -- and regulators -- are adept at addressing how they should be provided to the public. For example, North Carolina, a coastal state, has experience with the safe handling of oysters and shrimp. It has the expertise to decide whether oysters are fresh and wholesome, and whether the shellfish ought to be stored on ice or in a freezer before they're shucked for eating, raw or cooked. Why not allow a regulatory system that puts such expertise to use?

The Food and Drug Administration properly regulates products that flow across borders -- beef cattle and poultry, for instance. The agency's regulatory authority would be expanded under Burr's bill. States could ask the FDA to let them retain their rules and run their own inspections programs. But wouldn't those exceptions leave businesses with the same kind of patchwork of regulations that Burr says prompted the legislation in the first place?

Opponents suspect that the bill is in reaction to California's Proposition 65, which requires warning labels on food items whose ingredients cause cancer, birth defects or reproductive problems. That's more than other states require, but it isn't an unreasonable rule.

In any event, Burr should explain whether the California rule indeed is what sparked his bill, and if so, why it makes sense to upset well-functioning rules all over the nation to undo what residents in one state had a right to impose.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The News & Observer

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