Salmonella in eggs, peanuts, tomatoes, and spinach; and melamine in pet food and candy imported from China… With a regularity that has become downright terrifying, the food safety system in the United States has given us ample evidence that it has broken down completely. And so, in a small miracle of legislative activism, Democrats in Congress finally mustered the will and the votes to act, passing H.R. 2751 yesterday, not for the first time, but for the second time in the Senate and the third in the House. (A mistake on a technicality—Senate failure to follow an arcane procedure that allows everyone to pretend the bill it just passed originated in the House, where all tax legislation is required by the Constitution to begin its journey into law.)
Many people deserve credit for this December miracle, although my hat is especially doffed for Representatives John Dingell (D-MI) and Henry Waxman (D-CA) in the House and Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL). Dingell, the longest serving member of the House, had taken to calling the legislation “my bill” as in “where’s my damn bill?” growled with warm ferocity to his staff whenever the matter arose in his mind during the long months of waiting for the Senate to take action.
The new law covers the 80 percent of the American diet—everything but beef and poultry—that is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The old law it replaces was so weak that it did not give the agency authority to order recalls of poisoned food. Instead, the agency had to depend on the voluntary cooperation of food processors. The situation was so unbearable that a rare coalition evolved, including the Grocery Manufacturers, consumer groups, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and the Pew Center’s project on chemicals and food.
The new law gives the FDA dramatically expanded authority to inspect, recall, and punish the purveyors of tainted food. It even goes so far as to require the FDA to inspect all the food processing facilities in the U.S. a minimum number of times—the first time Congress has been that prescriptive in instructing an agency how to do its job in any health, safety, or environmental status other than the law that requires the Department of Agriculture to have a representative present whenever cattle are slaughtered. Finally, the law requires importers of food from abroad to certify that it was produced under standards equivalent to the American system, a very tall order considering the strange origins of food we import from places like China, where regulation is non-existent.
But we have too many statutes on the books these days that have become dead letters because the agencies charged with the responsibility of implementing them have such scarcity of resources that they cannot even make a respectable start on exercising their new authority. If the new Republican majority in the House decides not give the FDA enough resources to get a grip on its new responsibilities, this major health and safety accomplishment of this troubled Congress will be undercut.
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Rena Steinzor | December 23, 2010
Salmonella in eggs, peanuts, tomatoes, and spinach; and melamine in pet food and candy imported from China… With a regularity that has become downright terrifying, the food safety system in the United States has given us ample evidence that it has broken down completely. And so, in a small miracle of legislative activism, Democrats in Congress finally […]
Ben Somberg | December 21, 2010
A few stories from the last week that I thought deserved noting: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrapped up a rather impressive 8-day series Sunday on air pollution in 14 counties of southwestern Pennsylvania. Ultimately, the paper found that “14,636 more people died from heart disease, respiratory disease and lung cancer in the region from 2000 through […]
Lena Pons | December 20, 2010
In October, EPA requested nominations for substances that it should evaluate under the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS). Today CPR releases Setting Priorities for IRIS: 47 Chemicals that Should Move to the Head of the Risk-Assessment Line — a paper that we've submitted to EPA as our nominations for priority chemicals. Following up on our recent […]
Wendy Wagner | December 17, 2010
The Obama Administration’s newly released science policy memo is an important and largely positive development in the effort to protect science and scientists from politics. In particular, the policy takes aim at many of the abuses of science and scientists that defined the Bush era. It’s particularly encouraging, for example, that the policy calls on political appointees […]
Daniel Farber | December 15, 2010
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. I thought it might be interesting to see the general trajectory of CERCLA litigation over the years. The figures for reported court decisions are readily available on Westlaw. (I searched for CERCLA or Superfund by year.) Part of the trajectory makes sense, but part is puzzling. There’s a clear pattern up […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | December 14, 2010
A particularly revealing story in The Washington Post this weekend reported on a sordid tale of regulatory failure that may have helped contribute to this spring and summer’s outbreak of outbreak of egg-borne salmonella that sickened more than 1,900 people and led to the largest recall of eggs in U.S. history. In an agonizing case of […]
Amy Sinden | December 14, 2010
A federal appeals court’s decision on Friday refusing to block implementation of EPA’s first limits on carbon pollution from cars, power plants, and factories is good news for inhabitants of planet Earth. A coalition of industry groups, right wing think tanks, and the state of Texas had asked the court to grant a stay blocking EPA’s […]
Daniel Farber | December 13, 2010
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. On Friday the D.C. Circuit rejected efforts to stay EPA’s pending greenhouse gas regulations until the court decides the merits of the appeals. It could well take a year or more for the merits to be decided, so in the meantime EPA can move forward. The court order does not indicate […]
Dan Rohlf | December 7, 2010
Apparently feeling their oats after the Republicans captured control of the U.S. House in November’s elections, several GOP representatives from western states are already galloping out of the gates to attempt to roll back species protections in the West. They’ve initially set their sights on gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains, which were returned […]