Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., reportedly is pursuing a vote on a massive expansion of food regulation. Proponents contend the very security of America's food supply is at stake. Rhetoric aside, the nation's food supply has never been safer, thanks largely to technological advances and market forces. Consequently, granting vast new powers to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would raise the cost of food without increasing consumer protection.

Spanning about 150 pages, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, would authorize the FDA to dictate how farmers grow fruits and vegetables. It even would include rules governing soil, water, hygiene, packing, temperatures, and what animals may roam which fields and when. It also would increase inspections of food "facilities" and tax them to do so. And, fulfilling the dream of a long line of agency officials, the bill grants the FDA unilateral authority to order recalls.

In addition to the inevitable costs to consumers, expanding the agency's regulatory reach would require additional spending of $1.4 billion between 2011 and 2015, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The costs to the private sector have not been calculated but would likely reach into the hundreds of millions annually.

Incident rates of food-borne illness actually have been declining for more than a decade, despite higher consumption of the raw foods that are most often associated with outbreaks of food-borne illness. For example, there were 51.2 cases of confirmed food-borne bacterial contamination per 100,000 people in 1996. The rate fell by a third by 2009, to 34.8 cases per 100,000 people.

The bill would require the Environmental Protection Agency to "participate" in food-safety activities, which certainly would not improve regulatory efficiency. Moreover, contrary to the claims of Dingell, Reid and their allies, new regulations would not fill regulatory gaps in the food-safety system. Meat, poultry and dairy products, the most common sources of food-borne illness, are regulated by the Department of Agriculture and are not addressed in this bill.

The proposed act also calls for stepping up inspections of food facilities and voluminous record-keeping requirements, but even if the FDA somehow managed to increase inspections sevenfold in the next five years, meaningful improvements in food safety would not come from intermittent visits by regulators or their scrutiny of paperwork.

Small farmers and local producers are particularly concerned the proposed requirements would prove unaffordable. Indeed, all food "facilities," including those home-based businesses that make jam, bread and cheese for local markets, would be required to undertake periodic hazard analyses and produce "risk-based preventive controls."

Imports also would come under more stringent inspection, but contrary to conventional wisdom, food imports do not appear to carry a higher risk of contamination, according to FDA records.

History repeatedly has shown science and technology have delivered the greatest advances in food safety. Pasteurization, water disinfection and retort canning, for example, freed consumers from food transmission of botulism, typhoid fever, tuberculosis and cholera. More recently, irradiation and bioengineering have also helped to destroy pathogens and extend product shelf-life. Were it not for alarmist opposition to both, consumer acceptance would likely be greater, bringing with it broader health benefits.

As much as we might wish it to be otherwise, food-borne illness will always be with us. We are enveloped by microbes, and more than 200 known diseases are transmitted through food. About 5,000 deaths are related to food-borne diseases each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The most severe cases tend to occur in the very old, the very young, and those with compromised immune systems.

The Reid bill clearly contradicts the message sent by voters just three weeks ago: Americans do not want and cannot afford more unnecessary regulation and expansion of government. This proposal constitutes a costly and ineffective answer to a manufactured crisis.

Diane Katz is Research Fellow in Regulatory Policy in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Nov. 24, 2010

Posted Dec. 13, 20www.rep-am.com/articles/2010/11/24/commentary/522836.txt10