Warning Labels Removed
By Anthony | March 10th, 2006 | 12:35 amA wire story in today’s News and Record reported that the House passed a bill preventing states from adding extra warnings to food labels:
The House voted Wednesday to strip many warnings from food labels, potentially affecting alerts about arsenic in bottled water, lead in candy and allergy-causing sulfites, among others. Pushed by food companies seeking uniform labels across state lines, the bill would prevent states from adding food warnings that go beyond federal law.
The House is siding with food companies over the states and the interests of consumers. I could understand a push for standardization if it was in the interest of making the warnings stronger and our food suply more safe, but this bill just brings everything down to the lowest common denominator. “States’ rights” conflicted with “Industry lobbyists,” and it seems that “states’ rights” lost the battle.
March 11th, 2006 at 9:28 am
It amazes me that it passed, considering the wide opposition in the public and state governments. I don’t know why food labeling has become such a problem – it seems that even if you are generally against most government regulation, you would want to support knowing what is in your food. The folks in Congress have to eat too. We can’t be expected to inspect every food processing plant and keep up with all the health and science news, and we would be foolish to expect the big food companies to do this voluntarily.
March 11th, 2006 at 7:55 pm
“The folks in Congress have to eat too”
As do the lobbyists and members of the industry who were pushing for the legislation. I guess some people just have different priorities. Unfortunately, we’re all stuck with those priorities now.
March 15th, 2006 at 8:29 pm
Have noticed that everything and everyone has been losing to Industry Lobbyist big time for the past five years. This is the reason we needed lobbying reform so badly, and I had hoped the arrest of Abramoff would get something done. Then along came the Cartoons, rioting Muslims and the ports deal to shove reform right off the radar screen. Couldn’t you hear the big SIGH OF RELIEF coming from Washington?
April 7th, 2006 at 10:34 am
I fell right on top of fecund stench!