Call it “photo-op” politics. Here’s how it works: Pass a bill in Washington, then hold a press conference hailing it as revolutionary reform.
Bask in the limelight as you’re lauded for your exemplary
progressiveness. Then, when the news cameras have moved on, let the
thing languish.
Now it’s more than two years later and, well, guess what happened. The Obama Administration has basically eviscerated many of the key provisions of the law that it championed in the first place.
By way of
Grist
we find out that food makers will not now be required “to design,
implement, and test risk-based food-safety plans.” Nor will food
processing facilities, or the food they process, be tested for
contamination—unless they volunteer to do so.
As
Tom Laskawy
writes: “Without requirements for testing and verification of safety
plans, the FDA will remain powerless to stop things like the deadly 2011
listeria outbreak in cantaloupe caused by shockingly unsanitary storage
conditions at a Colorado farm. Had that farm been forced by law to
produce a safety plan and then to have that plan verified, much less to
have its produce tested, the people who died would likely be alive
today.”
Passed in the wake of a number of scary outbreaks of foodborne illnesses, the “landmark” food safety
act (yes, “landmark” now gets scare quotes) received bipartisan support
in Congress—yeah, something that might actually qualify as bipartisan,
with more than, say, two Republicans joining Democrats to support it.
So what happened? The
Food and Drug Administration dragged its feet
drafting the new regulations that were required by the law. Then there
was an election year. The general consensus seems to be that the Obama
Administration didn’t want the proposed rules released in 2012 for fear
of being further tarred as promulgating more “job killing” government
regulations.
But it appears at the end of the day it was the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB)—one of those offices that few Americans have ever heard of but which holds immense power—that put the kibosh on the new regs.
The OMB has long had a reputation under Republican presidents as
being the place new regulations go to die. Agencies submit their
proposals to OMB, and the office analyzes how much those proposals are
going to cost. And this being Washington, of course, politics comes into
play.
Word on the street is that OMB is appeasing the food industry lobby.
“It’s OMB once again protecting the corporate bottom lines at the
expense of protection for public health,” David Plunkett, an attorney
with Center for Science in the Public Interest, told
Food Safety News.
It’s all enough to make someone feel a little queasy.
