CSPI & Other Health Advocates Call on Senate to Reject “Reckless,” “Wrongheaded” Food-Safety Laws

What the heck is going on? Why would members of Congress even think of passing a bill that cuts back on food-safety and labeling requirements? Why threaten our citizens by not requiring critical laws that provide for such things as shellfish safety and restaurant hygiene?

The Center for Science in the Public Interest and other groups are alarmed about this state of affairs.

In fact, leading food safety advocates — responding to the U.S. House of Representatives passage of the National Uniformity for Food Act of 2005, H.R. 4167 — are calling for a boycott of the big food companies that wrote the legislation and lobbied Congress to secure its passage.

Now the U.S. Senate is considering this bill, which would wipe out more than 200 state and local food-safety and labeling requirements that would protect consumers from infected, toxic and carcinogenic food. This act would eliminate ways to alert us about health hazards in our food and water such as mercury in fish, arsenic in water, genetically modified ingredients in common foods, carcinogens in processed foods, and pathogens in raw and undercooked foods.

But at least some lawmakers are smart enough to realize that this potential legislation is horrific. In the last week, 39 State Attorneys General and seven Governors have urged the House of Representatives to reject this wrongheaded legislation.

Even former USDA insider Dr. Luise Light, nutritionist and food safety activist, is outraged.

"At a time when we know that there are 72 million bouts of illness, 325,000 hospitalizations, and more than 5000 deaths each year as the result of food poisoning, what justification can there be for destroying the minimal food safety protections now in place?" says Dr. Light, author of What to Eat; the Ten Things You Need to Know to Eat Well and Be Healthy (McGraw Hill, 2006), "As we import more food from third world countries with poor food sanitation, we need more and better regulations, not fewer and weaker ones," adds the former USDA insider, who is one of a number of activists calling for a big food brand boycott to drive home the anger of many consumers and food, health and environmental professionals to the legislation passed in the House on March 8, 2006, without public input.

Other groups who’ve also opposed this legislation include the Association of Food and Drug Professionals, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America, the Organic Consumers Association, and numerous other consumer and environmental groups.

All of them are urging the Senate to vote to undo the damage done by the House.

Please join alarmed citiizens and write to your legislators now to prevent this dreadful proposed legislation from being passed. Here’s how to take action.

Special thanks to Pam Killeen, investigative consumer reporter and real food activist, for alerting me to Dr. Light’s involvement in this important issue.