—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, April 29,1978
114
FDA’s functions explained to
By DIETER KREIG
WASHINGTON, D.C. -
Farmers are becoming more
interested in the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA)
than they used to be, and
farmers are getting to be
“pretty sensitized to
government actions that
affect farm income,” says
FDA Commissioner Donald
Kennedy. He made the
remark Monday during a
meeting with members of
the Newspaper Farm
Editors of America who
were meeting in the nation’s
capital at the time.
“It seems, I suspect, to
some of them that we (FDA)
are joining a large group
that’s ganging up on them,”
Kennedy said early in his
presentation.
“The fact of the matter is
that we’re perfectly well
aware that FDA decisions
have an impact on farm
mcome. But the laws under
which we operate don’t allow
us to pay much attention to
that fact,” the FDA com
missioner explained. That
means we can’t take the
economic losses or gains to a
particular sector into ac
count m deciding an issue of
chemical safety. That’s
because the law explicitly
doesn’t let us do that,”
Kennedy said.
A lot of confusion
surrounding FDA actions
and decisions spring up from
the cloudy issues of nsk
benefit and cost-benefit
issues the agency is mvolved
with, Kennedy told the
group. An example, he said,
is that food processors must
first prove that their food
additives aren’t harmful if
they intend to use them. This
could get into decisions
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which involve food
packaging. A bag, for
example, could release a
chemical into the food, f
meaning that a “food ad
ditive” is added unin
tentionally.
To calm some of the
hostility which FDA receives
from the agricultural
segment of society, Kennedy
asked the farm editors to
remember that “FDA does
not ban things because they
wake up one morning and
think it’s a nice idea. They
ban it because the law says
they have to. Second, you
might reflect on the fact that
Congress is not chosen to
treat all carcinogens m the
same way. The law treats
them differently depending
upon whether they are
unavoidably present in food
or whether they’re put in
during the course of
processing or manufac
turing. Those differences
yield important results in the
way the Food and Drug
Administration carries out
its regulatory respon
sibilities.”
“I think it’s important to
note that even if nsk-benefit
calculations were possible
for all the classes of com
pounds with which the Food
and Drug Administration
deals, we would have to have
something to calculate ...
numbers, values, something
solid rather than mere
assertion,” Kennedy con
tinued. “You can’t divide it
up so that producers get the
benefits and consumers bear
the risks,” he explained.
To illustrate how big of a
job FDA and its sister
organization, the En
vironmental Protection
Agency (EPA) have,
iMW»
Donald Kennedy
Kennedy told the group that
the EPA has registered
some 70,000 organic com
pounds that are in use in this
country and they’re being
added to at a rate of some 600
to 800 per year. Much of this
boom in the use of chemicals
is due to the revolution in
synthetic, organic
chemistry. “That’s a lot of
chemistry going on in the
world out there, and a
surprisingly big piece of it is,
of course, agricultural
chemistry.”
Animal drugs, fertilizers,
and pesticides make up the
bulk of chemicals useid on
the farm.
Kennedy noted that FDA
was a part of USDA until
1947, starting out as the
Bureau of Chemistry within
USDA Now the FDA
is a part of the
Department of Health,
Education and Welfare.
Funding for FDA, however,
comes from the House and
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Senate Agriculture Ap
propriations Committee. “I
want to tell you that m a year
when we’ve had to be kind of
tough on the folks involved in
agricultural production,
that’s not the kindliest and
most comfortable place to go
for your money.”
Nonetheless, Kennedy
credited both the Senate and
House Agriculture Com
mittees for being “very fair
minded” with their ap
propriations for FDA.
FDA was viewed as being
in alliance with food
producers in the old days,
Kennedy said, but the role
has changed. Agriculture
has felt more pressure,
despite the agency’s
determination to be fair to
all parties.
“The worst thing to
happen to any segment of the
economy is the destruction
of consumer confidence,”
the FDA commissioner said.
He noted further that FDA
tries to go about its duties in
a way which will not
discourage innovative ideas,
while at the same time
upholding standards which
the American pubhc ex
pects. Those standards are
inclusive of inspections of
foreign produce, to insure
that domestic produce is in a
fair position to compete with
imported produce, Kennedy
said.
In conclusion, Kennedy
commented:
“Whenever a regulatory
agency is making decisions
that go tough on a particular
sector of the economy, it’s
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farm editors
very, very important for that
agency to be as accountable
as it can be to the people who
represent the folks who are
getting hurt... to the people
who are getting hurt
themselves so that they can
ventilate those concerns and
so that there is both a per
ception and a reality that the
Rally planned
LANCASTER
Aamodt for Congress
Committee will host a rally
for all workers Sunday, April
30 at 2 p.m. at the Landis
Valley Resort Inn, Oregon
Pike, Lancaster, All those
interested in working in the
campaign of Norman O.
Aamodt are invited to at
tend.
government is listening.
This is the purpose for the
public hearings,” he ex
plained, “to be accountable
to the people who are being
affected by our decisions.”
have a
nice weekend...
The
brighten something