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Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Latest Watcher: What Spinach Tells Us About Food Safety
In the latest issue of the Watcher, we take a look at the lessons learned from the recent E.Coli outbreak. FDA has confirmed 183 cases as of yesterday with 29 cases of kidney failure.

The FDA is close to narrowing in on the source of contamination, but as the New York Times points out, finding the spinach packaging plant may not get to the heart of the problem. Not only are there gaps in inspection and oversight, as we noted in the Watcher, but practices in the cattle industry may be contributing to E.Coli contamination in ground water. According to the article, the practice of feeding cattle grain, instead of grass, increases the risk of the particularly dangerous strain of E.Coli seen in the recent outbreak. If manure contaminated with this E.Coli ends up in the water supply, it can then contaminate other food that we eat.

The United States Department of Agriculture does recognize the threat from these huge lagoons of waste, and so pays 75 percent of the cost for a confinement cattle farmer to make manure pits watertight, either by lining them with concrete or building them above ground. But taxpayers are financing a policy that only treats the symptom, not the disease, and at great expense. There remains only one long-term remedy, and it’s still the simplest one: stop feeding grain to cattle.
California’s spinach industry is now the financial victim of an outbreak it probably did not cause, and meanwhile, thousands of acres of other produce are still downstream from these lakes of E. coli-ridden cattle manure. So give the spinach growers a break, and direct your attention to the people in our agricultural community who just might be able to solve this deadly problem: the beef and dairy farmers.

Of course, animal farm runoff is just one part of the food safety puzzle, providing more evidence that more must be done to protect the nation's food supply.

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 08:32:48 PM

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

A Hybrid Car, An Environmentalist Does Not Make
In her latest column, Cindy Skrzycki of The Washington Post summarizes the opposing view points of OMB Watch and the Mercatus Center over the nomination of former Mercatus Regulatory Program Director Susan Dudley to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs:

OMB Watch and Public Citizen . . . released a 68-page report last week using Dudley's writings to attack her. It chastised her for ties to corporate donors and for what it called "Dudleynomics," an emphasis on free-market solutions to health and safety issues at the public's expense.
The study said Dudley has suggested that the Environmental Protection Agency leave it up to individual communities to control arsenic in their water; that publicly releasing information on toxics may be more costly than it's worth; and that regulators' "one-size-fits-all" approach to vehicle airbags eliminates consumer choice.
The Mercatus Center called the report "incomplete and biased" against Dudley and the center.

And how does Mercatus set the record straight?

Dudley's backers point to what they call her personal commitment to environmental stewardship, noting that she and her husband, Brian Mannix, the EPA's associate administrator for policy, economics and innovation, drove hybrid cars before hybrids were cool. Her profile on the Mercatus Center Web site says she enjoys hiking, canoeing and fly fishing.

The rationalization that driving a hybrid car somehow gives Dudley her environmental merit badge is somewhat ludicrous. Dudley's choice to drive a hybrid could very well have more to do with the economics of rising gas costs than a commitment to the environment. Even if Dudley does have a personal commitment to the environment, her writings, documented thoroughly in the report, still clearly express an economic and political position that is very hostile to public protections. Indeed, Dudley's driving habits are congruent with Mercatus's anti-regulatory philosophy. As Skrzycki explains:

The center -- whose board of directors includes Edwin Meese , attorney general under President Ronald Reagan ; Vernon Smith , a George Mason professor who shared the Nobel Prize for economics in 2002; and Charles Koch , chief executive of Koch Industries Inc . -- regards regulations as a hidden tax on American consumers. It has urged the Bush administration to pay more attention to market solutions and allow Americans to make their own choices about the need for regulation.

In Dudley's worldview, there's no inconsistency between making the personal choice to save on gas, while opposing standards to keep our air clean and our cars fuel efficient. Seems bizarre? It's called Dudleynomics.

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 10:47:22 PM

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Latest Watcher
Be sure to check out the latest issue of our biweekly newsletter, The Watcher. Reg policy articles this time:

Criticism of Draft Risk Assessment Bulletin May Delay Implementation

Report Finds Dudley Unfit to Serve

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 08:52:51 AM

The Cost is Too High
Read OMB Watch and Public Citizen's new report on the White House's radical nominee for OIRA, Susan Dudley.

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 08:41:18 AM

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Industry Buying Leverage at FDA
According to Wall Street Journal (subscription only), the FDA has been negotiating with industry to increase user fees, money paid by the drug industry to FDA ostensibly to help speed up drug approval. Small user fees were first introduced at FDA in the early 90's after industry complained that drug approval was too slow. The fees now make up over half of FDA's budget for drug reviews. Now FDA if negotiating yet another increase in these fees at closed-door meetings with industry representatives, several of them former FDA officials, according to the article:

Each time the arrangement has been renewed, the FDA has gained new funding. In return, industry has wrung concessions. In the 1997 deal, the review time for a standard application dropped from 12 months to 10 months. In 2002, the FDA agreed to a number of changes, including a new deadline for how fast the agency would respond to companies' requests for meetings about their drug applications.
In the latest talks with the FDA, industry representatives -- several of them former FDA officials -- have been sitting across the table from current government officials at the agency's offices in suburban Washington in closed-door meetings that have been going on for months. (FDA rules don't let the industry pay for refreshments, though insiders said agency officials did eat chocolate truffles brought by one industry official after assurances they were home-made.)

WSJ points out that while other regulatory agencies also rely on user fees, the regulators don't generally negotiate their fees directly with industry:

Regulators usually don't negotiate their budgets with the industries they oversee. Other agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission rely on user fees for at least some funding, but don't generally haggle over the fees. Instead, they typically impose changes through formal rule-making or by implementing formulas set by Congress.

The new agreement is likely to emerge in the next few weeks and will require congressional approval. So stay tuned for more developments.

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 09:14:17 AM

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