In the meantime, she says, the FDA—and restaurant operators—would benefit from less guidance and more authority in the food-safety arena.
“As the PCA outbreak illustrates, the FDA should be authorized to order a product recall if companies fail to voluntarily do so,” Garren says. With produce having emerged as a reservoir for food-borne illnesses, Garren argues the FDA’s Good Agricultural Practices should be made mandatory for high-risk fruits and vegetables.
It all amounts to a lot of unfinished business for the Obama administration, which not only has inherited a multi-tentacled hydra, but one that went headless for months until Obama appointed Margaret Hamburg to fill Andrew Von Eschenbach’s position. Efforts to fill the spot looked rocky in February, when former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S. Dakota), who Obama nominated as secretary of health and human services, withdrew his name for failure to report and pay income taxes.
The FDA has seen rough seas before, having lacked a commissioner for more than two years during the Bush administration. But never before has an incoming president been challenged by so many simultaneous crises, from war in Iraq and Afghanistan to an economy resembling that of the Great Depression.
Although White House spokesman Reid Cherlin says food safety is a top priority for the administration, it remains unclear what, if any, initiatives Obama would undertake to improve the performance of the FDA since he has yet to fully assess agency problems or proffer any solutions to them. Nor is it clear how his policies would affect restaurant operators, though it is likely the industry will see greater emphasis on nutritional labeling and combating obesity in addition to food safety.
“We have a Democrat in the White House,” Garren says, “so you would expect to see more emphasis on those issues.”
The NRA welcomes discussions with administration officials on corresponding initiatives, particularly the Labeling Education and Nutrition (lean) Act of 2008, a bill by Sens. Tom Carper (D-Delaware) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that would create a uniform national nutrition-labeling standard for restaurants while also providing them with a “reasonable range of flexibility.”
“We hope and expect to see that bill reintroduced to Congress soon,” says NRA Director of Nutritional Policy Sheila Weiss. “Failing that, restaurant operators may find themselves subject to a patchwork approach driven by state and local initiatives.”
Margo Wootan, director of nutritional policy with the Washington, D.C.–based Center for Science in the Public Interest (cspi), doesn’t believe LEAN has as much support as the competing Menu Education and Labeling (meal) Act, legislation by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) that would require chains with 20 or more locations to place nutrition labels on menus similar to those found on packaged goods. “MEAL has teeth, and LEAN doesn’t,” Wootan says. “LEAN would essentially allow operators to locate nutritional information on fliers, inserts, and other places where consumers might not see them.”
For all Wootan’s enthusiasm, MEAL has languished in Congress for years, though it stands a strong chance of becoming law under an Obama administration. “The Bush administration was about finger wagging, whereas Obama was actively involved in nutritional legislation as a senator, including a bill to remove junk food and soda from schools,” Wootan says.
Wootan believes menu ingredients will also fall under greater scrutiny, as evidenced by New York City’s move to decrease sodium levels in restaurant foods, as well as news that the FDA is considering divesting the ingredient of its GRAS status.
The good news, Weiss says, is that the New York initiative would decrease salt use incrementally, providing operators time to reformulate accordingly. Should the issue catch fire, Weiss would prefer a federal standard to ensure regulations don’t vary from locale to locale, an approach that did neither chains nor consumers any favors in the case of trans fats, she says.
For now, Garren says, safety and nutritional issues amount to a game of watch and wait, and will likely remain so until the Obama administration has cleared its desk of more urgent matters. Even a particularly bleak year for the FDA might not lead to substantial reform any time soon.
“This is an issue that will have to wait its turn,” Assistant Senate Majority Leader Richard J. Durbin, an Obama ally and longtime proponent of tougher food-safety laws, told reporters in December.
This winter’s PCA debacle left others feeling less patient.